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MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 




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MY FOUR WEEKS 
IN FRANCE 



By 

RING W. LARDNER 

AUTHOR OF 

Gullible's Travels, Etc. 



ILLUSTRATED BY 

WALLACE MORGAN 



INDIANAPOLIS 

THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



Copyright 1918 
The Bobbs-Merriix Company 



MAY 25 1913 


PRESS OF 

BRAUNWORTH & CO. 

BOOK MANUFACTURERS 

BROOKLYN, N. Y. 

J 


T 

©CI.A499108 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Dodging Submarines to Cover the Biggest 

Game of All 9 

II I Get to Paris and Encounter Some Strange 

Sights 30 

III I Try to Get to the American Camp — But 

Meet Disaster 54 

IV Finally I Get to the American Camp; 

What I Find There 76 

V My Adventures at the British Front . . 100 

VI How I Didn't Drive Major Blank's Car to 

Camp Such-and-Such 128 

VII I Start Home, with a Stop-Over at London 146 

VIII Back in Old "0 Say"; I Start Answering 

Questions 171 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN 
FRANCE 



DODGING SUBMARINES TO COVER THE 
BIGGEST GAME OF ALL 

Wednesday, July 18. A Lake Michigan Port. 

I kept an appointment to-day with a gentleman 
from Somewhere in Connecticut. 

"How," said he, "would you like to go to 
France?" 

I told him I'd like it very much, but that I was 
thirty-two 3'ears old, with a dependable wife and 
three unreliable children. 

"Those small details," he said, "exempt you from 
military duty. But we want you as a war corre- 
spondent." 

I told him I knew nothing about war. He said it 

9 



10 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

had frequently been proved that that had nothing to 
do with it. So we hemmed and we hawed, pro and 
con, till my conscientious objections were all over- 
ruled. 

"In conclusion," said he, "we'd prefer to have 
you go on a troopship. That can be arranged 
through the War Department. There'll be no 
trouble about it." 

Monday, July SO, A Potomac Port. 

To-day I took the matter up with the War De- 
partment, through Mr. Creel. 

"Mr. Creel," I said, "can I go on a troopship?" 

"No," said Mr. Creel. 

There was no trouble about it. 

Wednesday, August 1. An Atlantic Port. 

The young man in the French Consulate has 
taken a great fancy to me. He will not vise my 
passport till I bring him two more autographed 
pictures of myself. 

George W. Gloom of the steamship company said 
there would be a ship sailing Saturday. 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 11 

"Are we convoyed through the clanger zone?" 
I inquired. 

"We don't guarantee it," said he. "There has 
never been an accident on this line," he added. 

"What I was thinking about," said I, "wouldn't 
be classed as an accident." Further questioning 
developed the comforting fact that the ship I am 
taking has never been sunk. 

I told him I wanted a cabin to myself, as I ex- 
pected to work. 

"You will be in with two others," he said. 

"I would pay a little more to be alone," said I. 

This evidently was not worth answering, so I 
asked him how long the trip would take. 

"I know nothing about it," said he. 

"I believe that," said I when I was well out of 
his ear-shot. 

Wednesday, August 8. At Sea. 

We left port at ten last night, a mere three and 
a half days behind schedule. The ship and I should 
be very congenial, as we are about the same age. 

My roommates are a } 7 oung man from Harvard 



12 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

and a young man from Yale, but so far I have man- 
aged to keep the conversation neutral. We suspect 
that they made ours a first-class cabin by substitut- 
ing the word lere for Seme on the sign, and I am 
very certain that my berth was designed for Rab- 
bit Maranville. 

Our passenger list includes a general, a congress- 
man, a lady novelist and her artist husband, French ; 
a songbird, also French; two or three majors, a 
Thaw, and numerous gentlemen of the consular 
service. The large majority on board are young 
men going into American Ambulance and Y. M. 
C. A. work. 

After breakfast this morning there was life-boat 
drill, directed by our purser, who is permanently 
made up as Svengali. He sent us down to our 
cabins to get our life-belts and then assigned us to 
our boats. Mine, No. 12, is as far from my cabin 
as they could put it without cutting it loose from 
the ship, and if I happen to be on deck when that 
old torpedo strikes, believe me, I'm not going to do a 
Marathon for a life-belt. Shoes off, and a running 
hop, step and jump looks like the best system. 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 13 

Moreover, I'm going to disobey another of the rules, 
which is that each passenger must remain calm. 

Next we had to fill out a form for the enlighten- 
ment of Svengali as to our destination, business, 
home address, foreign address, literary tastes, etc. 
One item was "the names of relatives or friends 
you lofh." This was unanswered, as nobod} 7 aboard 
seemed to know the meaning of the verb. 

In the fumoir this afternoon a young American 
wanted a match. Pie consulted his dictionary and 
dug out "allumette." But he thought the t y s were 
silent and asked Augustc for "allumay." Auguste 
disappeared and returned in five minutes with a 
large glass of lemonade. The cost of that little 
French lesson was two francs. 

I am elected to eat at the "second table." Our 
bunch has luncheon at twelve-thirty and dinner at 
seven. The first table crowd's hours are eleven and 
five-thirty. Breakfast is a free-for-all and we sit 
where we choose. My trough mates at the meals 
are two Americans, a Brazilian, and four French- 
men. Ours is a stag table, which unfortunate cir- 
cumstance is due to the paucity of women, or, as 



14i MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

they are sometimes called, members of the fair sex. 
The Brazilian speaks nine or ten languages, but 
seems to prefer French. The two Americans are 
always engaged in sotto voce dialogue, and the four 
Frenchmen race with the Brazilian for the conver- 
sational speed championship of the high seas. This 
leaves Hie free to devote all my time to the proper 
mastication of food. 

Thursday, August 9. Completely at Sea. 

A gentleman on board is supplied with one of 
these newfangled one hundred dollar safety suits. 
The wearer is supposed to be able to float indefi- 
nitely. It is also a sort of thermos bottle, keeping 
one warm in cold water and cool in hot. I do not 
envy the gent. I have no ambition to float indefi- 
nitely. And if I didn't happen to have it on when 
the crash came, I doubt whether I could spare the 
time to change. And besides, if I ever do feel that 
I can afford one hundred dollars for a suit, I won't 
want to wear it for the edification of mere fish. 

When Svengali isn't busy pursing, he is usually 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 15 

engaged in chess matches with another of the offi- 
cers. The rest of the idle portion of the crew stand 
round the table and look on. Sometimes they look 
on for an hour without seeing a move made, but 
they never seem to lose interest. Every little move- 
ment brings forth a veritable torrent of francais 
from the spectators. I can understand the fascina- 
tion of chess from the player's end, but could get 
few thrills from watching, especially when there 
was standing room only. 

Far more fascinating to look at is the game two 
of my French trough mates play at breakfast. The 
rules are simple. You take a muffin about the size 
of a golf ball. You drop it into your cup of choco- 
late. Then you fish for it, sometimes with a spoon, 
but more often with your fingers. The object is to 
convey it to your mouth without discoloring your 
necktie. Success comes three times in five. 

The players are about evenly matched. One of 
them I suspect, is not in the game for sport's sake, 
but has a worthier object. Nature supplied him 
with a light gray mustache, and a chocolate brown 



16 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

would blend better with his complexion. If the 
muffins hold out, his color scheme will be perfect be- 
fore we reach port. 

The discovery has been made that there's a man 
on board who plays the cornet, so if we are subbed 
it will not be an unmitigated evil. 

Friday, August 10. 

Every morning one sees on the deck people one 
never saw before, and as we have not stopped at 
any stations since we started, the inference is that 
certain parties have not found the trip a continuous 
joy ride. 

A news bulletin, published every morning, some- 
times in English and sometimes in French, keeps 
us right up to date on thrilling events, thrillingly 
spelled. I have copied a sample: 

It is now the tim for the -final irvoaseon of the west 
by the eastren american league teams and before 
this clash is over it will be definitively known wether 
the two sox teams are to fight it out in a nip and tuk 
finish or wether the Chicago sox will have a comfort- 
able mar gen to msure a world seines betwean the two 
largest American citys Chicago and New York. 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE IT 

The French news deals exclusively with the de- 
velopments in the world series Over There, which 
is, perhaps, almost as important. 

A new acquaintance made to-day was that of the 
Gentleman from Louisiana. He introduced himself 
to scold me and another guy for not taking suffi- 
cient exercise. We told him we found little pleasure 
in promenading the deck. 

"That's unnecessary," he said. "Get yourselves 
a pair of three-pound dumb-bells and use them a 
certain length of time every day." 

So we are constantly on the lookout for a dumb- 
bell shop, but there seems to be a regrettable lack 
of such establishments in mid-ocean. 

The Gentleman from Louisiana says he is going 
to join the Foreign Legion if they'll take him. He 
is only seventy years old. 

"But age makes no difference to a man like I," 
says he. "I exercise and keep hard. All my friends 
are hard and tough. Why, one of my friends, an 
undertaker, always carries a razor in his boot." 

Presumably this bird never allows psychological 
depression in his business. 



18 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

The Gentleman from Louisiana continues : 

"I've got a reputation for hardness, but I'm only 
hard when I know I'm right. I used such hard 
language once that they injected me from a com- 
mittee. I was state senator then. But in all the 
time I held office I never talked more than two 
minutes." 

We expressed polite regret that he was not a 
state senator still. And we asked him to have a 
lemonade. 

"No, thank you. Even the softest drinks have a 
peculiar effect on me. They make my toes stick 
together." 

We guaranteed to pry those members apart again 
after he had quenched his thirst, but he would not 
take a chance. 

On the way cabinward from this fascinating pres- 
ence, I was invited into a crap game on the salle a 
manger floor. The gentleman with the dice tossed 
a hundred- franc note into the ring and said : "Shoot 
it all." And the amount was promptly oversub- 
scribed. So I kept on going cabinward. 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 19 

Samedi, 11 Aout. 

The man back there in the steamship office can no 
more truthfully say: "There has never been an 
accident on this line." 

I awoke at three-thirty this morning to find the 
cabin insufferably hot and opened the port-hole 
which is directly above my berth. The majority of 
the ocean immediately left its usual haunts and came 
indoors. Yale and Harvard were given a shower 
bath and I had a choice of putting on the driest 
things I could find and going on deck or drowning 
where I lay. The former seemed the preferable 
course. 

Out there I found several fellow voyagers asleep 
in their chairs and a watchman in a red-and-white 
tam-o'-shanter scanning the bounding main for old 
Hans W. Periscope. 

I wanted sympathy, but the watchman informed 
me that he ne comprended pas anglais, monsieur. 
So we stood there together and scanned, each in his 
own language. 



20 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

My garcon de cabine promises he will have me 
thoroughly bailed out by bedtime to-night. 

I sat at a different breakfast table, but there was 
no want of entertainment. At my side was a master 
of both anglais and francais, and opposite him an 
American young lady who thinks French is simply 
just impossible to learn. 

"Mademoiselle," says he, "must find it difficult to 
get what she likes to eat." 

"I certainly do," says she. "I don't understand a 
word of what's on the menu card." 

"Perhaps I can help mademoiselle," says he. 
"Would she like perhaps a grapefruit?" 

She would and she'd also like oatmeal and eggs 
and coffee. So he steered her straight through the 
meal with almost painful politeness, but in the in- 
tervals when he wasn't using his hands as an aid to 
gallant discourse, he was manicuring himself with 
a fork. 

This afternoon they drug me into a bridge game. 
My partner was our congressman's secretary. Our 
opponents were a Standard Oil official and a vice- 
consul bound for Italy. My partner's middle name 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 21 

was Bid and Mr. Oil's was Double. And I was too 
shy to object when they said we'd play for a cent a 
point. 

At the hour of going to press, Standard Oil had 
practically all the money in the world. And my 
partner has learned that a holding of five clubs 
doesn't demand a bid of the same amount. 

Sunday, August 12. 

The boat seems to be well supplied with the 
necessities of life, such as cocktails and cards and 
chips, but it is next to impossible to obtain luxuries 
like matches, ice-water and soap. 

Yale and Harvard both knew enough to bring 
their own soap, but my previous ocean experiences 
were mostly with the Old Fall River Line, on which 
there wasn't time to wash. Neither Yale nor Har- 
vard ever takes a hint. And "Apportez-moi du 
savon, s'il vous plait," to the cabin steward is just 
as ineffectual. 

All good people attended service this morning, 
and some bad ones played poker this afternoon. 

In a burst of generosity I invited a second-class 



22 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

French young lady of five summers to have some 
candy. She accepted, and her acceptance led to 
the discovery that the ship's barber is also its candy 
salesman. 

This barber understands not a syllable of Eng- 
lish, winch fact has added much to young Amer- 
ica's enjoyment. The boys, in the midst of a hair 
cut, say to him politely : "You realize that you're 
a damn rotten barber?" And he answers smilingly : 
"Oui, oui, monsieur." Yesterday, I am told, a 
young shavee remarked: "You make me sick." 
The barber replied as usual, and the customer was 
sick all last night. 

To-morrow afternoon there is to be a "concert" 
and I'm to speak a piece, O Diary ! 
Monday, August 13. 

The concert was "au profit du Secours National 
de France. OEuvre fondee pour repartir les Se- 
cours aux Victimes de la Guerre." 

Ten minutes before starting time they informed 
me that I was to talk on "The American National 
Game," and I don't even know how the White Sox 
came out a week ago to-morrow. 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 23 

The afternoon's entertainment opened with a few 
well-chosen remarks by our congressman. The gen- 
eral, designated on the program as "chairman," 
though his real job was toastmaster, talked a while 
about this, that and the other thing, and then in- 
troduced the cornet player, using his real name. 
This gentleman and I blew at the same time, so I 
have no idea what he played. I got back in time for 
some pretty good harmonizing by three young 
Americans and a boy from Cincinnati. Then there 
was a Humorous Recitation (the program said so) 
by a gent with a funny name, and some really de- 
lightful French folk songs by the lady novelist. 
After which came a Humorous Speech (the pro- 
gram forgot to say so) by myself, necessarily brief, 
as I gave it in French. The French songbird fol- 
lowed with one of those things that jump back and 
forth between Pike's Peak and the Grand Canon, 
and a brave boy played a ukelele, and the quartette 
repeated. In conclusion, we all rose and attempted 
La Marseillaise. 

Some of the programs had been illustrated by the 
lady novelist's artist husband, and these were auc- 



24 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

tioned off after the show. I made my financial con- 
tribution indirectly, through better card players 
than myself. My bridge partner, I noticed, had 
recovered from his attack of the Bids. 

Tuesday, August H. 

The concert, by the way, was given in the salon 
de conversation, which, I think, should be reserved 
for the Gentleman from Louisiana. He has now 
told me two hundred times that he won his election 
to the State Senate by giving one dollar and a half 
to "a nigger." 

One of our young field-service men spoiled the 
forenoon poker game with a lecture on how to catch 
sharks. His remarkable idea is to put beefsteak on 
a stout copper wire and troll with it. He has evi- 
dently been very intimate with this family of fish, 
and he says they are simply crazy about beefsteak. 
Personally, I have no desire to catch sharks. There 
are plenty aboard. But I do wish he had not got 
to the most interesting part of his theory at the 
moment the dealer slipped me four sixes before the 
draw. Everybody was too busy listening to stay. 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 25 

We have discovered that the man behind the gun 
im the fumoir bears a striking resemblance to Von 
HintUaafewrg, but no one has been found who will tell 
him so. 

There was a track meet this afternoon, and the 
author of this diary was appointed referee. But 
the first event, a wheelbarrow race, was so exciting 
that he feared for Ins weak heart and resigned in 
favor of our general. There didn't seem to be much 
else to the meet but ju-jutsu, the sport in which 
skill is supposed to triumph over brawn. I noticed 
that a two-hundred-and-thirty-pound man was the 
winner. 

We are in that old zone, and the second table's 
dinner hour has been advanced to half past six so 
that there need be no lights in the dining-room. 
Also, we are ordered not to smoke, not even to light 
a match, on deck after dark. The fumoir will be 
running for the last time, but the port-holes in it 
will all be sealed, meaning that after thirty-five 
smokers have done their best for a few hours the 
atmosphere will be intolerable. We can stay on 
deck smokeless, or we can try to exist in the airless 



26 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

fumoir, or we can go to bed in the dark and wish 
we were sleepy. And the worst is yet to come. 
Wednesday, August 15. 

The rules for to-night and to-morrow night pro- 
vide for the closing of our old friend, the fumoir, 
at seven o'clock, and that witching hour is on you 
long before you expect it, for they jump the clock 
fifteen minutes ahead every time it's noon or mid- 
night. The ship will not be lit up. The passengers 
may, if they do their shopping early. 

There was another life-boat "drill" this after- 
noon. Every one was required to stand in front of 
his canoe and await the arrival of Svengali. When 
that gent appeared, he called the roll. As soon as 
you said "Here" or "Present," your part of the 
"drill" was over. When the time comes I must do 
my drifting under an alias, as Svengali insists on 
designating me as Monsieur Gardnierre. But No. 
12 is at least honored with two second-class ladies. 
Many a poor devil on the ship is assigned to a life- 
boat that is strictly stag. 

The Gentleman from Louisiana to-day sprang 
this one: 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE Tl 

"You know when I part my hair in the middle I 
look just like a girl. Well, sir, during the Mardi 
Gras, two years ago, I put on a page's costume and 
parted my hair in the middle. And you know girls 
under a certain age must go home at nine o'clock 
in the evening. Well, sir, a policeman accosted me 
and told me I had to go home. I gave him the bawl- 
ing out of his life. And maybe you think he wasn't 
surprised !" 

Maybe I do think so. 

The Gentleman strayed to the subject of Patti 
and wound up with a vocal imitation of that lady. 
He stopped suddenly when his voice parted in the 
middle. 

We have seen no periscopes, but when I opened 
my suit-case tins morning I met face to face one 
of those birds that are house pets with inmates of 
seven-room flats at twenty-five dollars per month. 
I missed fire with a clothes brush, and before I could 
aim again he had submerged under a vest. Looks 
as if the little fellow were destined to go with me to 
Paris, but when I get him there I'll get him good. 



28 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

Thursday, August 16. 

Great excitement last night when a small un- 
lighted boat was sighted half a mile or so off our 
port. Our gunners, who are said to receive a bonus 
for every effective shot, had the range all figured 
out when the pesky thing gave us a signal of friend- 
ship. It may have been part of the entertainment. 

To-day we persuaded the Gentleman from Lou- 
isiana to part his hair in the middle. The New 
Orleans policeman is not guilty. 

It develops that while first- and second-class pas- 
sengers were unable to read or smoke after dark, 
the third-class fumoir is running wide open and the 
Greeks have their cigarettes, libations and card 
games, while the idle rich bore one another to death 
with conversation. 

Un Americain aboard is now boasting of the 
world's championship as a load carrier. It was too 
much trouble for him to pay Auguste for each 
beverage as it was served, so he ran a two days' 
charge account. His bill was one hundred and 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 29 

seventy-eight francs, or thirty-five dollars and sixty 
cents. 

"Who got all the drinks?" he asked Auguste. 

"You, monsieur," that gent replied. 

"And what do you charge for a highball?" 

"One franc, monsieur," said Auguste. 

Which means, if Auguste is to be believed, that 
one hundred and seventy-eight highballs went down 
one throat in two days. And the owner of the 
throat is still alive and well. Also, he says he will 
hereafter pay as you enter. 

As an appetizer for dinner to-night the captain 
told everybody to remain on deck, fully dressed and 
armed with a life-belt, this evening, until he gave 
permission to retire. 

We're all on deck, and in another minute it will 
be too dark to write. 

To-morrow night, Boche willing, we will be out 
of the jurisdiction of this Imp of Darkness. 



II 



I GET TO PARIS AND ENCOUNTER SOME 
STRANGE SIGHTS 

Friday, August 17. A French Port. 

In obedience to the captain's orders we remained 
on deck last night, fully dressed, till our ship was 
past the danger zone and in harbor. There was a 
rule against smoking or lighting matches, but none 
against conversation. 

The Gentleman from Louisiana and a young 
American Field Service candidate had the floor. 
The former's best was a report of what he saw once 
while riding along beside the Columbia River. An 
enormous salmon jumped out of the water and raced 
six miles with the train before being worn out. 
Whether the piscatorial athlete flew or rode a motor- 
cycle, we were unable to learn. 

The Gentleman from Louisiana yielded to his 
SO 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 31 

younger and stronger countryman. Some one had 
spoken of the lack of convoy. "Don't you think we 
haven't a convoy," the kid remarked. 

I scanned the sea in all directions and saw noth- 
ing but the dark waters. "Where is it?" I in- 
quired. 

"There's one on each side of us," said Young 
America. "They're about twenty miles from the 
ship." 

"I should think," said somebody, "that a very 
slender submarine might slip in between our side 
kicks and us and do its regular job." 

"No chance," the youth replied. "The convoy 
boats are used as decoys. The sub would see them 
first and spend all its ammunition." 

A little later he confided in me that the new 
American war-ships were two hundred and forty-five 
thousand horsepower. I had no idea there were 
that many horses left to measure by. 

We spotted a shooting star. "That was a big 
one," I said. 

"Big! Do you know the actual size of those 
things? I got it straight from a professor of as- 



32 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

tronomy. Listen. They're as small as a grain of 
sand." 

"Why do they look so big?" 

"Because they're so far away and they travel so 
fast." 

Round ten o'clock, beckoning lights ashore told 
us we were close to safety. But the French gunners 
remained at their posts two hours longer. The cap- 
tain's shouted order, relieving them from duty, was 
music to our ears. 

After midnight, however, we turned a complete 
circle, and at once the deck was alive with rumors. 
We had been hit, we were going to be hit, we were 
afraid we would be hit, and so on. The fact was 
that our pilot from ashore was behind time and we 
circled round rather than stand still and be an easy 
target while awaiting him. We were in harbor and 
anchored at three. Many of us stayed up to see the 
sun rise over France. It was worth the sleep it cost. 

They told us we would not dock until six to-night. 
Before retiring to my cabin for a nap, I heard we 
had run over a submarine and also that we had 
not. The latter story lacked heart interest, but had 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 33 

the merit, probably, of truth. Submarines have lit- 
tle regard for traffic laws, but are careful not to 
stall their engines in the middle of a boulevard. 

I was peacefully asleep when the French officers 
came aboard to give us and our passports the 
Double O. They had to send to my cabin for me. 
I was ordered to appear at once in the salon de con- 
versation. A barber hater addressed me through his 
beard and his interpreter : "What is Monsieur Lau- 
danum's business in France?" 

I told him I was a correspondent. 

"For who?" 

"Mark Sullivan." 

"Have you credentials from him?" 

"No, sir." 

"Your passport says you are going to Belgium. 
Do you know there are no trains to Belgium?" 

"I know nothing about it." 

"Well, there are no trains. How will you go 
there?" 

"I'll try to get a taxi," I said. 

"Are you going from here to Paris ?" 

"Yes." 



34 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

"And where are you going from Paris ?" 

"I don't know." 

"Please explain that answer." 

"I will go wherever the authorities permit me to 

go." 

"That is not a satisfactory answer." 

"I'm sorry." 

"What is your real business in France?" 

"To write." 

"I'm afraid we'll have to keep your passport. 
You will appear to-morrow morning at nine o'clock 
at this address." 

And they handed me a scary-looking card. 

On the deck I met our congressman and told him 
my troubles. 

"I know these fellows very well," he said. "If 
you like, I can fix it for you." 

"No," I replied proudly. "I'd rather do my own 
fixing." 

At the dock I got into a taxi and asked to be 

taken to the Hotel. Not to my dying day 

will I forget that first ride in a French taxi. Part 
of the time we were on the right side of the street, 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 35 

part of the time on the left, and never once were 
we traveling under a hundred and fifty miles an 
hour. We turned twenty corners and always on one 
ear. We grazed dozens of frightened pedestrians, 
many of them men crippled in the war, or by taxis, 
and women too old to dodge quickly. We aimed at a 
score of rickety horse-drawn vehicles, but our con- 
trol was bad and we bumped only one. In front of 
the hostelry we stopped with a jerk. 

"Comme beaucoup ?" I asked the assassin. 

<; Un franc cinquante," he said. 

Only thirty cents, and I thought I knew why. 
When they get through a trip without killing any 
one, they feel they have not done themselves justice 
nor given you a square deal. 

I found myself a seat at a sidewalk table and 
ordered sustenance. The vial they brought it in 
was labeled "Biere Ritten," but I suspect the ad- 
jective was misspelled. 

Till darkness fell I watched the passing show — 
street-cars with lady motormen and conductors; 
hundreds of old carts driven by old women, each 
cart acting as a traveling roof for an old dog; 



36 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

wounded soldiers walking or hobbling along, some 
of them accompanied by sad-faced girls ; an appall- 
ing number of women in black; a lesser number of 
gayly garbed and extremely cordial ones, and whole 
flocks of mad taxis, seeking whom they might de- 
vour. 

By using great caution at the street crossings, I 
succeeded in reaching the telegraph office where I 
wrote a message informing Paris friends of my 
arrival. I presented it to the lady in the cage, who 
handed it back with the advice that it must be re- 
written in French. I turned away discouraged and 
was starting out again into the gloom when I beheld 
at a desk the songbird of the ship. Would she be 
kind enough to do my translating ? She would. 

The clerk approved the new document, and asked 
for my passport. I told her it had been taken away. 
She was deeply grieved, then, but without it mon- 
sieur could send no message. Bonne nuit ! 

Back at the hotel I encountered the Yankee vice- 
consul, a gentleman from Bedford, Indiana. I told 
him my sad plight, and he said if matters got too 
serious his office would undertake to help. 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 37 

With his assurances to comfort me, I have retired 
to my room to write, to my room as big as Texas 
and furnished with all the modern inconveniences. 

Saturday, August IS, Paris. 

It is Saturday night and they have hot water, but 
before I take advantage of it I must recount the 
thrilling experiences of the day. 

After a sidewalk breakfast of "oofs" and so- 
called cafe in Bordeaux, I went to keep my engage- 
ment at court. It was apparent that I was not the 
only suspect. The walk outside and the room within 
were crowded with shipmates, most of them from the 
second cabin, all looking scared to death. 

I stood in line till I realized that T must make it 
snappy if I wanted to catch the eleven-five for 
Paris ; then I butted my way into the august pres- 
ence of Him of the Beard. 

He recognized me at once and told me with his 
hands to go up-stairs. In a room above I found 
the English-speaking cross-examiner, with the ac- 
cent on the cross. 

He waved me to a chair and began his offensive. 



38 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

"Monsieur Laudanum," he said, "when I asked 
you yesterday how you expected to get to Belgium, 
you said something about a taxi. That answer was 
not satisfactory. You have not explained anything 
to us. I do not believe we can allow you to leave 
Bordeaux." 

"All right, sir." I arose. 

"Sit down!" he barked. "Now tell me if you 
have any explanations to make." 

"Nothing beyond what I said yesterday. I have 
come here to write. I want to go to Paris, and when 
I arrive there I will find out where else I will be 
permitted to go." 

"It seems very strange to me that you have no 
papers." 

"Yes, sir." 

"Have you any?" 

I searched my pockets and produced a used-up 
check book on a Chicago bank. The ogre read 
every little stub and I felt flattered by his absorbed 
interest. When he had spent some five minutes on 
the last one, which recorded a certain painful trans- 
action between me and a man-eating garage, he 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 39 

returned my book and said: "You don't satisfy 
me at all. You will have to stay here." 

"Suppose," said I, "that the American consul 
vouches for me." 

"That will make no difference. You do not seem 
to realize that we are at war." 

"Not with America." 

"I don't know your nationality." 

"I thought," said I, "that my passport hinted at 
it." 

"You will have to stay in Bordeaux," was his 
pertinent reply. 

"Thank you, sir," I said, and arose again. 

"Sit down," said he, "and wait a minute." 

He was out of the room five years. 

"If he ever does come back," I thought, "it will 
be in the company of five or six large gendarmes." 

But when he came back he came alone. 

"Here," he said abruptly, "is your passport. 
You will be permitted to go to Paris. We will keep 
track of you there." And he bowed me out of the 
joint. 

The crowd down-stairs seemed as great as ever, 



40 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

and as scared. I picked my way through it with my 
head held high, a free man. 

I decided on a fiacre for my trip from hotel to 
station. It would be safer, I thought. But I 
learned, on our interminable way, that defensive 
fighting in the streets of Bordeaux is far more 
terrifying, far more dangerous than the aggressive 
taxi kind. We were run into twice and just missed 
more times than I could count, and besides my con- 
Ve}^ance was always on the verge of a nervous break- 
down. 'Spite all the talk of periscopes and subs, 
the journey across the ocean was parlor croquet 
compared to my fiacre ride in Bordeaux. 

While awaiting my turn at the ticket window I 
observed at the gate a French soldier wearing a 
large businesslike bayonet. "Probably to punch 
tickets with," I thought, but was mistaken. An- 
other gentleman attended to that duty, and the 
soldier did not give me so much as the honor of a 
glance. 

Outside on the platform were a few of the Red 
Cross and Y. M. C. A. men of our ship, and I 
learned from them that one of their number had 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 41 

suffered a sadder fate than I. He had tried to get 
by on a Holland passport, viseed at the French con- 
sulate in New York, and been quietly but firmly per- 
suaded -to take the next boat back home. 

I shared a compartment on the train with a native 
of the Bronx, and a French lady who just couldn't 
make her eyes behave, and two bored-looking French 
gentlemen of past middle age, not to mention in 
detail much more baggage than there was room for. 
The lady and the two gentlemen wore gloves, which 
made the Bronxite and me feel very bourgeois. 

Our train crew, with the possible exception of 
the engineer and fireman whom I didn't see, was 
female, and, thinking I might some time require 
the services of the porter, I looked in my dictionary 
for the feminine of George. 

To try my knowledge of francaise, I had pur- 
chased at the station a copy of Le Cri de Paris. I 
found that I could read it very easily by consult- 
ing the dictionary every time I came to a word. 

But the scenery and the people were more inter- 
esting than Le Cri, the former especially. Perfect 
automobile roads, lined with trees ; fields, and truck 



42 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

gardens in which aged men and women, young girls 
and little boys were at work ; green hills and valleys ; 
winding rivers and brooks, and an occasional cha- 
teau or a town of fascinating architecture — these 
helped to make us forget the heat and dust of the 
trip and the ear-splitting shrieks of our engines. 
No wonder the boche coveted his neighbor's house. 

We stopped for some time at one particularly 
beautiful town and went out for air. I wondered 
audibly concerning the name of the place. An 
American companion looked at the signs round the 
station. 

"It's Sortie," he said. 

But it wasn't. It was Angouleme, and I wouldn't 
mind moving thither. My American friend was 
probably from Exit, Michigan. 

The discovery was made and reported that one 
might go into the dining-car and smoke as much as 
one liked without asking permission from the 
maiden with the dreamy eyes. This car was filled 
with French soldiers and officers going back to the 
front after their holiday. There seemed to be as 
many different uniforms as there were men, and the 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 43 

scenery indoors was almost as brilliant as that out- 
side. 

It was about eight-thirty in the evening when we 
reached Paris. The sophisticated soldiers engaged 
their "redcaps" before they left the train, calling 
to them through the open windows. The demand 
was much greater than the supply, and I was among 
the unfortunates who had to carry their own bag- 
gage. I staggered to a street where a whole flotilla 
of taxis was anchored, but when I asked for one the 
person in charge said "No, no, no, no, no, 9 ' meaning 
"No," and pointed around the corner. I followed 
his directions and landed on a boulevard along 
which there was a steady procession of machines, 
but it was fully twenty minutes before one came 
that was going slow enough to stop. 

Our city is not all lit up like a church these 
nights, and it was impossible to see much of what 
we passed on the way to the hotel. 

At the desk an English clerk, dressed for a noon 
wedding, gave me a blank to fill out. All the blank 
wanted to know was my past family history. It is 
to be sent, said the clerk, to the prefect of police. 
I had no idea he was interested in me. 



44. MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

Sunday, August 19, Paris. 

When I get back to Chicago I shall insist that 
my favorite restaurant place tables out on the walk. 
It is more hygienic and much more interesting. 

But Chicago, I'm afraid, can't provide half as 
much sidewalk entertainment as Paris. As I re- 
member the metropolis of Illinois, there is a sad 
lack there of demonstrative affection on the streets. 
In fact, I fear that a lady and gentleman who kissed 
each other repeatedly at the corner of Madison and 
Dearborn would be given a free ride to Central 
Station and a few days in which to cool off. Such 
an osculatory duel on Paris's Grand Boulevard — 
also known by a dozen other names — goes prac- 
tically unnoticed except by us Illinois hicks. 

An American officer and I — at the former's ex- 
pense — lunched sur curb to-day. The food was 
nothing to boast about, but we got an eyeful of 
scenery. Soldiers — French, British and American 
— strolled by constant^, accompanied by more or 
less beautiful brunettes, and only a few were 
thoughtless enough not to stop and kiss a few times 




Only a few were thoughtless enough not to stop and kiss a few 
times in full view of our table 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 45 

in full view of our table. We also observed the in- 
mates of passing taxis. No matter how wide the 
back seat, the lady occupant invariably sat on her 
escort's lap. A five-passenger car in America is a 
ten-passenger car in Paris, provided the chauffeur 
has a girl of his own. 

When the American officer was tired of buying, 
I left him and sought out the Chicago Tribune 
office, conveniently located above Maxim's. The 
editor was there, but he was also broke, so I went 
back to the Ritz and got ready for bed. 

The express office will be open to-morrow and I 
will be a rich man. 

Lunfii, 20 Aout. Paris. 

Went down to the express office and cashed a 
large part of my order. Friends were with me, and 
they immediately relieved me of most of the burden. 
I was hungry for lunch, having had no breakfast. 
Meat was what I wanted, and meat was what I 
couldn't get. Which led me to inquire into the 
Rules de la vie of Paris. 



46 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

1. Monday and Tuesday are meatless days. 

2. All except Saturday and Sunday are heat- 
less clays. Hot baths are impossible on Mondays, 
Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays. 

3. Strong liquor is procurable between noon and 
two p. m. and seven-thirty and nine-thirty at night. 
At other times ye toper must be content with light 
wines. 

4. All public places except the theaters must 
close and douse lights at nine-thirty in the evening. 

5. There is no speed limit for taxis or privately 
owned cars. A pedestrian run over and killed is 
liable to imprisonment. The driver is not only inno- 
cent, but free to hurl as many French curses as he 
likes at his victims. If the pedestrian is not killed, 
he must explain why not to the judge. 

6. It is not only permissible but compulsory to 
speak to any girl who speaks to you, and a girl who 
won't speak to you should be reported to the police. 

7. No watch or clock is wrong. Whatever 
time you have is right and you may act accordingly. 

8. Matches never ignite. A smoker must pur- 
chase a cigar or cigarette lighter and keep it filled 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 47 

with essence, the francaise term for gas. Sometimes 
the lighters work. 

9. American cigarettes are not procurable. Bum 
ones may be bought at any tabac store or cafe for 
only five times what they are worth. 

10. Water must never be used as a thirst 
quencher, and seldom for any other purpose. It's 
worse than bourgeois ; it's unheard-of. 

The lack of water, hot or cold, drove me to a 
barber shop this morning. The barber first made 
me put on a shroud, and I was afraid he was either 
going to cut me to pieces or talk me to death. But 
his operation was absolutely painless and his inces- 
sant conversation harmless, because I couldn't 
understand a word of it. 

From the barber shop I went to the information 
department of American Army Headquarters. 
That's where you get permits to visit our camps. 
But of course, if you've run over here from Amer- 
ica, you have lots of spare time on your hands, 
so they're doing you a favor if they hold you up 
a few days. What is a week or so when a man's 
here for a whole month? 



48 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

They have queer ideas at the Maison de la Presse, 
which is the French equivalent for our publicity 
bureau. They receive you cordially there and treat 
you just as if you were not dregs, 

I jumped thither after a futile visit to our own 
headquarters. I said I would like to go to the 
French front. 

"Certainly," replied the man in charge. "When- 
ever is convenient for you, we'll see that you get a 
trip." 

So I told him when it would be convenient and 
he's going to see me through. I hear that the Brit- 
ish are similarly peculiar. They are polite even to 
newspaper men and magazine writers. They might 
even speak to a cartoonist. 

Returning to our side of the Seine, I bumped in- 
to some Australians, here on leave. One had been 
in German}' before the war and could speak and 
understand the "schoenste language." 

"They use me as an interpreter," he said. "When 
they bring in a bloody boche prisoner, I talk to 
him. First we give him a real meal, maybe bacon 
and eggs and coffee, something he hasn't seen for 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 49 

months. Then I ask him where he came from and 
how he got here. Most of them are glad to tell 
me the truth. Those that do, I mark them down 
as 'Very intelligent.' Those that volunteer infor- 
mation I record as 'Extremely intelligent.' Those 
that say 'Nicht verstehe' go down in the record as 
'Not intelligent.' But the majority are so bloody 
well glad to be out of the war that they talk freely. 

"I asked one Heinie if he was going to try to 
escape. 'Not me,' he said, 'I'm tickled to be here.' 
They're all fed up on the war. You'd be too with 
three years of it." 

This young man admitted that he was one of the 
best football players in Australia. "Maybe I've 
forgotten how now," he said. "I've been over here 
three years. Just think of it — I traveled twelve 
thousand miles, or maybe it's kilos, to mix up in 
this." 

Baseball, he told me, had taken a strong hold on 
Australia. 

"I don't hit well," he said, "but I can catch what 
you call flies ! I can catch the widest flies that are 
knocked." 



50 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

Which gift would probably be useless in America, 
where most of the flies knocked are bloody narrow. 

Before I left him I learned also that Les Darcy 
was all right at heart, but that the professional 
"sports" spoiled him, and that he could have 
"knocked Jack Johnson, Stanley Ketchel, Billy 
Papke or Jess Willard clean out of the ring." 

He is going back to the trenches to-night, and I 
hope there are plenty of extremely intelligent 
Heinies there to keep him busy interpreting till his 
next leave. Interpreting, I should think, would be 
much pleasanter than going over the top. 

Tuesday, August 21. 

This time it was an American of the French Am- 
bulance Service. 

"Say, listen," he said. "I can give you some 
mighty good stories. Real stuff, do you get me? 
Listen: One night there was a boche wounded out 
there and I brought him in. He had one leg all 
shot to pieces and we had to operate. I was going 
to give him the ether when he turned over and 
looked me in the face. 'Why, Dan,' he said, 'aren't 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 51 

you going- to speak to me ?' It was a chap I'd gone 
to school' with in America. I could give you lots 
of stuff like that; do you get me? I used to be in 
New York, and Rube Goldberg used to call me up 
out of bed at six in the morning. 'Dan,' he'd say 
to me, 'I'm up against it for an idea. Will you give 
me an idea?' Do you get me? And there's a 
dramatic critic in New York — I won't tell you his 
name — but he used to tag around me after a first 
night and ask me what I thought of the show. Do 
you get me? I can give you a lot of good stuff." 

I told him I was afraid that if he gave it to me 
all at once I wouldn't remember any of it. So he 
is coming to my hotel every day during his leave, 
to give me a little at a time — if he can find me. 

Last night a good-hearted American officer took 
me to dinner at La Tour d'Argent, which is said 
to be the oldest restaurant in Paris and which, they 
say, is the place the Kaiser was going to have his 
banquet on a certain night three years ago if Gott 
hadn't gone back on him at the last moment. 

We ordered duck, the restaurant's specialty. 
They cook it in your presence, slice off whatever is 



52 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

sliceable, and then put the bird in a press and give 
you the result as gravy. After the meal they hand 
you a post card on which is inscribed le numero de 
voire canard. I looked up "canard" in my diction- 
ary and found that it meant a drake, or false news, 
or a worthless newspaper. I have heard lots of 
false news, but I know no one took the trouble to 
count the items. Also I know that my newspaper 
is neither worthless nor numbered. So canard in 
this case must mean drake. The number of mine 
was 41654. If he had happened to disagree with 
me, I could have taken his number and traced him 
to the source. It's a very good idea and might 
be used in America on eggs or drinks. 

I made another trip to the office which is sup- 
posed to be in charge of American correspondents 
and accommodations for them. I will go there 
again to-morrow and again the next day. I will 
bother them to death. Meantime I have applied to 
a person in London for permission to go to the 
British front, and have been assured a visit to the 
French lines late next week. I have wonderful 
vision and can see things twelve miles away. 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 53 

P. S. It was revealed to me to-night that my 
detention and trial in Bordeaux was a frame-up 
conceived by loving friends aboard ship and carried 
out by that English-speaking cross-examiner, who, 
believe me, is a convincing actor. 

Thanks, gents. It was good for about two thou- 
sand words. 



Ill 

I TRY TO GET TO THE AMERICAN CAMP 
—BUT MEET DISASTER 

Wednesday, August 22. Paris. 

The gentlemen authorized to issue visitors' passes 
to the American camp and the various fronts don't 
seem to realize that a person may be in a hurry. 
They fail to appreciate the facts that hanging 
round Paris is financial ruin and that the world 
series, which one positively must attend, is drawing 
nearer every hour. 

Permission to go to the British front was re- 
quested over a week ago. No reply. Daily calls 
at our own press bureau produce nothing but prom- 
ises of a trip somewhere, some time. Monsieur Boss 
of the French Maison de la Presse says I may be 
taken through the devastated territory — in a week 
or so. 

54 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 55 

Meanwhile the Battle of Paris goes on, with 
Death always staring one in the face — Death from 
taxis, from starvation, from water thirst, from 
hand-to-hand encounters with the language. 

Death from a taxi is the most likely form and 
the most distressing, for under the Parisian law the 
person run down and killed is the one at fault and 
the corpus delicti is liable to life imprisonment or 
worse. A pedestrian has no more rights here than 
the Kaiser, and it's almost impossible to cross the 
street unless you've gone through a course of in- 
tensive training in Detroit. 

There would be little danger if all the crossings 
were on the upgrade, for the French cars — those 
which aren't in the military service — have a des- 
perate time climbing. They have to shift speeds 
even to run up on the sidewalk, which is one of 
their favorite sports. But the Loop District of 
Paris is topographically on the level, and taxis can 
tear along like an eastbound Russian. 

On occasions when you are run into and knocked 
down a gendarme appears on the scene with pencil 
and note-book. He takes the name and address of 



56 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

the driver and escorts you to jail. If you die there, 
the driver is sent a medal for marksmanship. 

Taxi fares are cheaper, probably, than anywhere 
else in the world. They amount to practically noth- 
ing if you have an accident — that is, a trip without 
a collision with something or somebody. But even 
if you enjoy an average tour and hit a building or 
another vehicle or a dog or a person, they soak you 
only about half as much as they would in New York 
or Chicago, where there are far fewer thrills per 
drive. 

The tariff from the hotel where I put up (I 
haven't found out how much) to American General 
Headquarters, wnere I go every morning to be re- 
fused a pass to the camps, is one franc cinquante 
if you miss all targets. This forenoon it was two 
francs cinquante because we knocked the rear wheel 
off a young boy's bicycle. 

The boy, after a hearty bawling out by the 
driver and two gendarmes, was carted to a police 
station. They'll hardly keep him in jail, though. 
Matteawan is the proper place for a boy who at- 
tempts bicycling on the streets of Paris. 










A pedestrian has no more rights here than the Kaiser, and it's 
almost impossible to cross the street unless you've gone 
through a course of intensive training in Detroit 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 57 

Thursday, August 23, Farts. 

One of several differences between an American 
and a Frenchman is that an American tries to under- 
stand a Frenchman's English and a Frenchman 
tries not to understand an American's French. 

To-day I wanted to go from somewhere to the 
Hotel Continental. 

"Hotel Con-tin-ent-al," I said to the driver. 

He shook his head. I repeated. He shook his 
head again. This went on till I had pronounced 
the name five times and he had shaken his head that 
often. I said it the sixth time just as I had said it 
the other five. 

"Oh-h-h!" shouted the driver, his face lighting 
up. "Hotel Con-tin-ent-al !" 

And there wasn't a particle of difference between 
his version and mine. 

There was excitement in our village last night. 
At twenty-three-thirty o'clock, as we Parisians say, 
began a chorus of screaming sirens, the warning 
signal of an air raid. Those of us living in up- 
stairs rooms experienced a sudden craving for a 



58 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

home Somewhere in the Basement, and in gratify- 
ing it didn't stop to use the elevator. The ma- 
jority taking part in the Great Descent wore pa- 
jamas or their female relatives, sometimes called 
chemises de nuit. A few, of which I was one, were 
still attired for the day, and we went outdoors and 
looked up. 

A regular flock of planes was, you might say, 
planely visible, but there was no fight in the air 
and no dropping of bombs on our fair city. The 
birdmen soared round a while in a perfectly friendly 
manner and then retired to their nests. The sirens 
were stilled and we all went up-stairs, the majority, 
mentioned above, grateful for the war-time lack of 
lights. 

It seems that a Frenchman, returning from his 
day's toil, forgot to flash his password, which is a 
red tail-light, or something. And the patrol took 
him for a boche and gave chase. Fortunately for 
himself, he glimpsed his pursuers in time and 
turned on the required signal. 

To-day there has been a big demand for first- 
floor rooms. 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 59 

Friday, August £,{,. Paris. 

An American major — it is interdict by the censor 
to mention the names of any officers save General 
Sibert and General Pershing — asked a friend in 
London to buy him an automobile and ship it here 
for his use. The Londoner was able, after much 
difficulty, to purchase one of those things that 
grow so rapidly in Detroit. He packed it up and 
mailed it to Le Havre. From there it had to be 
driven to Paris. 

The major had never learned to drive this par- 
ticular brand. In fact, his proportions are such 
that not even a shoehorn could coax him into the 
helmsman's seat. He asked me to go up and get it 
for him. I declined on grounds of neutrality. That 
was a week ago. 

Well, yesterday one Mr. Kiley, who has been 
over here some time in the ambulance service, came 
back to town with the car and four flat tires, which, 
evidently, were far past the draft age when the sale 
was made in London. Mr. Kiley helped himself 
to a stimulant and then told me about his trip. 



60 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

He reached Le Havre last Saturday afternoon. 
He had in his pockets no papers except an order for 
the car. He had been in Le Havre about two min- 
utes when a gentleman attacked, him from behind 
with a tap on the shoulder. The gentleman pulled 
back his coat lapel and flashed a star bearing the 
insignia of the British Intelligence Department. 
He was curious as to Mr. Kiley's name and busi- 
ness. Mr. Kiley told him. Then he wanted to see 
Mr. Kiley's papers. Mr. Kiley showed him the 
order for the car. 

"I'm afraid that won't do," said the officer. "I'd 
advise you to leave town." 

"Give me just an hour," pleaded Mr. Kiley, "just 
time enough to get the car and get out." 

"All right," said the officer, "and be sure it's only 
an hour." 

Mr. Kiley hastened to where the car was re- 
posing, displayed the order, and started joyously 
to wind her up. He cranked and he cranked and he 
cranked. Nothing doing. He gave her a push 
downhill and tried to throw her into speed. Noth- 
ing doing. It occurred to him that something must 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 61 

be the matter. A thorough examination resulted 
in a correct diagnosis. There was no gas. 

Next to getting a drink of ice-water in Paris, the 
hardest job for a stranger is buying gasoline in any 
French town. Mr. Kiley was turned down five times 
before eighteen o'clock, when all the garages closed 
for the day. 

He registered at a hotel and went into the cafe 
for dinner. He was just picking up the carte du 
jour when his friend, the officer, horned in. 

"Mr. Kiley," says this guy, "you have been in 
town more than an hour." 

"Yes, sir," said Mr. Kiley. "But I've had trou- 
ble. I found my car, but I can't run it because 
there's no essence." 

"I think you'd better leave town," said the officer. 

"If you don't mind," said Mr. Kiley, "I'll leave 
early in the morning." 

"I wouldn't mind if you left right now," said he. 

There followed a long discussion and a cross- 
examination even crosser than mine in Bordeaux. 
Mr. Kiley revealed his whole family history and won 
the right to stay overnight, provided he remained 



62 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

indoors and departed from town first thing in the 
morning. 

But France is like America in that Saturday is 
usually succeeded by Sunday, and when Mr. Kiley 
arose from his hotel bed and resumed his search for 
gas he found every garage in town shut up tight. 
As I remember the United States, garages do not 
keep holy the Sabbath Day nor any other day. Over 
here, however, everything closes on Sunday except 
churches, theaters and saloons. 

Mr. Kiley took in the situation and returned to 
his room to hide. Shortly before midi there was a 
knock at his door and a new officer appeared. 

"You seem to like our town, Mr. Kiley," said he. 

"I'll leave it as soon as I can get away," said 
Mr. Kiley. 

"No doubt," replied the officer. "But I believe 
you will be here a long while." 

Mr. Kiley tried to look calm. 

"Bone," he said in perfectly good French, 

"For the present," said the officer, "you must not 
leave the hotel. Later on we'll talk things over." 

In the cafe on Sunday night Mr. Kiley met an 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 63 

American and told him his troubles. The American 
had a car of his own in Le Havre and plenty of 
gasoline. He would be glad to give Mr. Kiley 
enough to start him on his way. 

"But I can't go," said Mr. Kiley, "till I've fixed 
it with the police. I'll have to look for them." 

He didn't have far to look. No. 2 was in the 
lobby. 

"Yes," said No. £, "you can leave town if you 
leave quick. There must be no more foolishness. 
The only tiling that saves you from arrest is your 
uniform." 

Mr. Kiley left town and left quick, and, aside 
from his four blow-outs, had an uneventful trip to 
Paris. 

But what if I had taken that assignment — I with 
no uniform except one willed me by the Chicago 
Cubs? OBoy! 

Saturday, August 25. Paris. 

On advice of counsel I went to Colonel Anony- 
mous of the American General Staff and besought 
him to fix it so that I might get to one of our camps 



m MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

without further stalling. Colonel Anonymous said 
it was all right with him and telephoned to Major 
Noname, who seemed to have authority in affaires 
journalistic. 

Major Noname, fortunately, is a baseball fan. 
I told him what I did know, and lots that I didn't 
know about our national pastime, and the reward 
was an American press pass to the infantry camp, 
S. in F. 

I am going in a horseless carriage with Joe and 
Howard, fellow conspirators in the so-called jour- 
nalistic game, and the start is to be made early 
Monday morning. Joe is going to drive his own 
car, and I hope he knows how. 

Dimanche, 26 Aout. Paris. 

Yesterday was Saturday, and everybody had had 
a hot bath and felt like doing something. Three 
of us decided to take in the highly recommended 
show at Les Ambassadeurs. 

A member of the Theatrical Geographic Society 
met us in the foyer and showed us a map of the 
playhouse. From it we were supposed to pick our 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 65 

seats. We chose three that, on paper, were in the 
sixth row in the center aisle. Our usher, female, 
led us to three which were in the tenth row, off to 
one side. Our usher stuck round as if she expected 
something. I was the party with the seat checks, 
and she got nothing. I was ignorant of the rules 
of the game. But not for long. Pretty soon in 
came three of the World's Greatest Fighters, alias 
Canadian soldiers, and sat down behind us. Their 
usher was more persistent than mine. 

"What do you want?" demanded one who seemed 
to be the financial leader. "I already gave you a 
franc." 

"Un franc pour trois ?" said the lady in horror. 

"Yes, and that's enough," said the Canuck. 
"Aller!" he added in perfect Canadian. 

"Je ne comprend pas," said the lady. 

"Go to the devil then !" said the Canadian in per- 
fect Portuguese. 

The lady went somewhere, but whether to the 
proper destination I do not know. 

"I wonder how much they charge to get out," 
wondered the Canadian. 



66 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

Along about the middle of the show our own 
usher popped up before me and held out her right 
hand, at the same time exhibiting both teeth in an 
ingratiating smile. I shook the proffered hand. 
She withdrew her teeth. 

"Non. non, non, non," she said. 

I asked her what she voulez-voued. She was coy. 

"Do you want a tip ?" I inquired in plain Mich- 
igan. 

Both teeth reappeared. A dental curiosity drove 
me to hand her three francs. I had not underesti- 
mated. 

In the second act a very nice-looking lady sang 
A Broken Doll in plain Thirty-ninth Street. The 
stage chorus tried to help her out on the second 
refrain, but, with all due modesty, I must say that 
it was the Canadians and I who earned the vocifer- 
ous encore. 

Lwidi, 27 Aout. Paris, 

The first batch of laundry was back when I re- 
turned from the theater Saturday night. Collars 
were done up in a neat package, tied with baby- 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 67 

blue ribbon. They looked just as when I had sent 
them out except that there was a high, shiny polish 
over the soiled spots. As for handkerchiefs, let us 
follow the British communique style: 

"Eleven of our handkerchiefs went over the 
Blanchisserie lines. Two came back. Nine are 
missing." 

Some practical joker suggested that I go out 
yesterday afternoon and watch a baseball game be- 
tween a Canadian team and a club from the Amer- 
ican Red Cross. St. Cloud was the battle ground. 
You pronounce St. Cloud exactly as it is not spelled. 

A taxi man took us out there by way of Kansas 
City and El Paso, and during the forty minutes' 
trip he was in high speed at least one minute. We 
bumped into a ceremony of awards. French sol- 
diers to the number of two hundred were being 
given the Croix de Guerre. 

The ceremony over, we crossed the race tract 
and got on to the baseball field. There was an 
hour of badly needed practise, and then the two 
belligerents went at each other in a so-called ball 



68 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

game. It was stopped at the end of the eighth inn- 
ing on account of rain, eight innings too late. 

The rain, I am told, was long overdue, and we 
may expect gobs of it between now and then. 

I am writing this early Monday morning, and 
early Monday morning is when we were supposed 
to start for the American camp. But there seems 
to be a difference of opinion over the meaning of 
the French adverb "early." 

Tuesday, August 28. Somewhere m France. 

"Early" proved to be half past ten yesterday 
morning. ^Jbe drove us to the city limits, and there 
we had to pause. According to this year's rules, 
ye automobilist pauses at the limits, has his gaso- 
line measured, and then goes on. Returning to 
town, he has to pay a tax on the added amount of 
gasoline he brings, or something like that. 

We were allowed to go out of town, and some 
thirty yards beyond the limits we found a garage. 
There we filled up with essence. Howard did the 
cranking, which is a necessity with all French cars, 
and away we went. 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 09 

It was raining and it was cold. Joe and Howard 
were in the front seat, Joe driving and Howard 
studying the road map. I was in the back seat, 
catching cold. 

"We'll go right ahead," said Joe, "to Such and 
Such a Place, and there we'll stop and have lunch." 

Well, we stopped in Such and Such a Place, but 
it was not from a desire of lunch. It was because 
we were compelled to stop. 

"Let's see your papers," said the stopper in 
French. 

The stoppees, in English, displayed their passes 
to the American camp. The stopper didn't know 
whether they were good or not. He asked us to 
wait a moment and disappeared out of the rain. 
We waited several moments. Finally there appeared 
another stopper, who read carefully our passes and 
told us they were no good and that we would have 
to loom up at the City Hall. 

We went there, with Joe and Howard in the 
front seat and an officer and I in the back, me still 
catching cold, especially in the feet. 

In the City Hall were French officers attired in 



70 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

all colors of the French army, which made the colors 
of the rainbow look like Simon Pure White. Our 
crime, it seems, was in not having an automobile 
pass on a red card. Or maybe it was blue. One of 
the thirty gentlemen in charge said we would have 
to wait till he telephoned back to Paris. Knowing 
the French telephone system, we inquired whether 
we might go across the street and eat. We were 
told we might. 

We went across the street and ate, and it was a 
good meal, with meat, on a day which was meatless 
in Paris. A subalte.-n interrupted the orgy and said 
we were wanted back in the City Hall. Back there 
the startling information was that no telephonic 
satisfaction had been obtained. We asked whether 
we might go back to the cafe. There was no ob- 
jection. We played pitch. French soldiers by 
scores came up and looked on. Joe thought, sub 
rosa, that it would be a grand idea to startle 'em. 
So we played pitch for one hundred francs a hand, 
it being tacitly understood that the money didn't 
go. But we certainly had them excited. 

Between pitch games in which thousands of 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 71 

francs were apparently lost and won, we visited, on 
summons, the City Hall five or six times. Every 
time there was the same heavy barrage of francais. 

Entered, finally, an English-speaking gent who 
said we might leave the city provided we went 
straight back to Paris. 

"We'd much prefer," said Joe, "to go on to 
where we were going." 

"You have the choice," was the reply, "of re- 
turning to Paris or remaining here, in jail." 

Paris sounded the more attractive. They gave 
us back our car and away we went. It was after 
twenty o'clock, and it was pitch dark, and it was 
cold, and it was raining. And the man who had 
made the machine had forgotten to equip it with 
headlights. 

A little before midnight, on the downhill main 
street of a village, we saw ahead of us a wagon. It 
was two feet ahead of us. There being nothing 
else to do we banged into it. Then we stopped. 
The driver of the wagon sat suddenly down in the 
middle of the street and apologized. We all got out 
to see whether any damage had been done to the 



72 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

car. The only wounds discernible in the darkness 
were a smashed radiator and a bent axle. 

"It's lucky this happened in a town," said I. 
"We can probably find a hotel." 

"We're not going to look for one," said Joe. 
" We're going to drive to Paris." 

We got back in and, to our amazement, the darn 
thing started. There was plenty of headlight now, 
for the whole hood was ablaze. All lit up like a 
church, we went on our mad career until our convey- 
ance dropped dead, overcome by the heat. This was 
four miles from a town that will be famous in the 
histories of this war. 

"I guess we're through," said Joe. "One of us 
will have to stay with the car and see that nothing 
is stolen. The other two can go back to town and 
find a bed." 

By a vote of two to one, Howard was elected to 
stay with the car. He was the youngest. 

Joe and I hiked our four miles in silence. The 
town was as brilliantly lighted as a cemetery and 
apparently void of inmates. We groped for an 
hour in a vain search for a hostelry. At length 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 73 

we gave up and resolved to sleep on the huge 
cathedral's front porch. We were ascending the 
steps when a door opened and a human being stood 
before us. 

"Arrested again," thought I. 

But the human being turned out to be not a cop- 
per, but a priest. 

"Bon soir, monsieur," said Joe. "Voulez-vous 
show us ou we can find a hotel?" 

He led us across the street to a place we had 
doped out as the high school. He rapped on the 
door with his foot. In a few moments an aged lady, 
dressed for the night, appeared. There was a rapid 
exchange of francais, after which we thanked the 
priest and were taken through a courtyard and up- 
stairs to our room. We said a prayer for Howard 
and went to sleep, and I had a nightmare. I 
dreamed of a porterhouse steak. 

This morning we decided it wouldn't be clubby 
to have breakfast before we had rescued Howard 
and the car. We went to a garage which was 
equipped with a beautiful lady, but no automobiles 
nor tow-ropes. We found a livery stable that had 



74 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

every thing but a horse. We commandeered a young 
man's delivery cart from in front of a grocery 
store and drove out to the scene of our car's demise. 
Howard and the corpse were still there. Howard 
thought it would be a good idea to go to the near- 
est farm-house and rent a horse and a rope from the 
proprietor. The proprietor was very ignorant. He 
couldn't understand our French. But in his employ 
was a German prisoner who could talk his own- 
language and ours and the funny one that is pre- 
valent round here. He explained our wants to the 
farmer and there ensued a few moments of hag- 
gling over price. We finally rented two horses and 
a rope for fifty francs and dragged the car back 
to town. From the looks of it, in daylight, I would 
say the economical course would have been to leave 
it out there in the road and keep the fifty francs. 

The garage man says, in English, that he can 
make the necessary "reparations" in three weeks. 
So far as I'm concerned, he can devote three years 
to the job. Hereafter I'll do my cross-country 
flitting about on a train. 

It's on one now, Paris bound, that I'm writing. 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 75 

There is nothing to do but write, for Howard is 
getting the sleep he missed last night and Joe is 
too angry to talk. He has spoken one sentence 
since we got up this morning. 
"This is a queer war," he said. 



IV 

FINALLY I GET TO THE AMERICAN 
CAMP; WHAT I FIND THERE 

Thursday, August 30. At an American Camp. 

Me and a regular American correspondent, Mr. 
Bazin, who has been here since before the war, but 
is still good-natured, took the train from Paris this 
morning and reached our destination shortly after 
lunch time. This is one of a string of villages in 
which the main body of the Expeditionary Forces 
are billeted. 

We were met at the train by one of the corre- 
spondents' cars, a regular he-man of a car from 
home, with eight cylinders and everything. Each 
correspondent rents a seat in one of the machines 
at a cost of sixty dollars a week. For this trifling 
sum he may be driven anywhere he wants to go 
along the line. 

The correspondents have a tough life. They are 
76 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 77 

quartered in a good — judged by French standards 
— hotel, and are not what you could call overworked. 
There is nothing to write about, and if you wrote 
about it you probably couldn't get it through. 

Mr. Corey, one of these slaves, invited me to ac- 
company him to an infantry billet, some eighteen 
miles distant. We sailed along over the perfect 
roads at an average speed of about sixty, slowing 
up in the villages to dodge a harmless course among 
the cows, chickens and children, all of whom use 
the middle of Main Street for their playground. 

We passed an occasional soldier, but it was a 
nice clear day, and the large majority were out in 
the fields and hills rehearsing. Our boys, Fm told, 
are getting quite a workout. Usually they leave 
their billets at seven in the morning, walk from six 
to twelve miles to a drill ground, and work till half 
past four in the afternoon. Then they take the 
long hike "home" and wonder how soon supper will 
be ready. Frequently, however, there is practise in 
night trench warfare, and then the grind continues 
till ten or eleven o'clock. The work is hard, but so, 
by this time, are the boys. 



78 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

The captain on whom we called said he was glad 
to meet me, which is the first time that has happened 
in France. We asked him whether there was any 
news. He said yes, that the Salvation Army had 
established headquarters in the camp. 

"I'm glad," he remarked, "that they've decided 
to go in on our side. It may influence the Kaiser's 
friend Gott." 

The chief need of the soldiers, he went on, was 
amusement. The Salvation Army's and Y. M. C. 
A.'s efforts were appreciated, but continual rations 
of soup and meat palled at times, and a little salad 
and dessert, in the form of Charlie Chaplin or the 
Follies, would make life more bearable. 

"Some American theatrical producer," said the 
captain, "could win our undying gratitude by ship- 
ping over a stock company with a small repertory 
of shows, with music, and girls. I believe he'd find 
it profitable too. When the boys get paid they 
don't know what to do with their money. There's 
nothing to spend it on in these parts." 

The captain invited us to dinner, but we had a 
previous date with members of the Censorship 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 79 

Bureau. These entertained us with stories which I 
voluntarily delete. From their hotel we returned 
to our own, held a brief song service in the corre- 
spondents' mess, and called it a day. 

Friday, August 81. At an American Camp. 

"Would you like to meet General Sibert?" asked 
Mr. Corey. 

General Sibert's name is one of the two that may 
be mentioned. 

I said I would, and we left after breakfast for the 
next village, where headquarters is situate. In the 
outer office were some clerks and a colonel. The 
latter could never be accused of excessive cordiality. 

"The general is busy," he said. 

"How long will he be busy?" inquired Mr. Corey. 

"I have no idea," said the colonel. 

Mr. Corey and I felt we would be warmer out- 
doors, so we climbed back in our car and asked our 
sergeant-driver to take us to the nearest training 
grounds. Here an infantry regiment was going 
through simple drill, and calisthentics which were 
far from simple. 



80 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

The nearest captain approached, smiled pleas- 
antly and asked what he could do for us. We in- 
troduced ourselves. 

"Correspondents, eh?" he said. 

"Well, then, you can do something for us— make 
the newspapers and magazines quit calling us Sam- 
mies. We've never done anything to deserve a 
name like that." 

"What's the matter with it?" we inquired. 

"Everything!" said the captain. "It doesn't 
fit, it sounds childish, and we just naturally hate 
it." 

We asked him whether there was an acceptable 
substitute. 

"I don't know of any," he said. "In due time 
we'll wish one on ourselves that will have pep and 
sound real. Meanwhile call us Julias, Howards — 
anything you like, except Sammies." 

We promised to do our best for him, and he was 
grateful enough to invite us to his mess for lunch. 

This young man — he looks about twenty-nine — 
hasn't been to his home, somewhere out West, since 
he left West Point, six years ago. He hasn't seen 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 81 

a show in six years. Mexico and the Philippines 
have kept him busy. His promotion from lieutenant 
to captain is very recent, and he still wears only one 
stripe. "I suppose I'll be a major before I get the 
other," he said. "A man can hardly keep up with 
his rank these days." 

He called our attention to the physical condition 
of his men. 

"You've got to be in the pink to go through those 
exercises without yelling for help," he said. "These 
fellas couldn't have done it a month ago. Now they 
seldom get tired, though the hours are pretty stiff. 
To-day is a cinch. It's pay-day, and there's a 
muster soon after lunch. So most of us will get a 
half holiday and nobody'll object." 

The captain blew his whistle to indicate that the 
game was over. His boys quit happily, and we 
left him after agreeing to show up at his billet in 
time for lunch. 

"We have a fairly good cook," he promised. 
"But what is much more important, we have a 
beautiful young lady to wait on us." 

Our next stop was at a trench school. Americans, 



82 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

under French tutelage, had constructed a perfect 
— so we were told — system of ditches and entangle- 
ments, and had shown aptitude in learning the of- 
fensive and defensive points of this pleasant method 
of warfare. They were now engaged in bomb- 
throwing drill. Some of them had tried the base- 
ball throw, but had found the grenades too heavy. 
Several crooked-arm throws would do things to a 
person's elbow. But, according to the officers, the 
youngsters had done very well with the bowling 
motion and had surprised the French with their 
accuracy. 

This officer, another captain, spoke in compli- 
mentary terms of the French assistance. 

"They've been more than diligent with us," said 
he. "They've never shown impatience when we 
failed to grab their point, but have gone over it 
and over it till we've learned it to suit them. The 
difference in languages makes it hard sometimes 
to get what they're after, but they eventually man- 
age to make themselves understood. The only fault 
I have to find with them," he confided, "is that they 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 83 

don't give us credit for knowing anything at all. 
They tell us this thing's a rifle, and the thing on 
the end of it is a bayonet, and so forth. And one 
of them showed me a barbed-wire entanglement one 
day, and told me what it was for. I'd always been 
under the mistaken impression that it was used for 
bed-clothes." 

We had to turn down this captain's luncheon in- 
vitation, but we stopped at his house for light 
refreshment. His lieutenant, a young University 
of Michigan boy, had come over on the first trans- 
port, and related interesting details of that historic 
trip. 

We went on to the other captain's, and lunched 
with him and his major and colonel. The beautiful 
young lady proved every bit as pretty as a pair of 
army shoes. But the food was good and the cap- 
tain's French better. He kept hurling it at the 
beautiful young lady, who received it with derisive 
laughter. His accent, it appeared, was imposseeb. 

"I like to make her laugh," he told me. "It takes 
me back home among the coyotes." 



84 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

On the street of the village I held converse with 
a private, aged about twenty-three. I said I sup- 
posed he was glad it was pay-day. 

"What's the difference!" he said. "I got more 
money now than Rockefella. I ain't spent more'n 
a buck since we been over, and then it was just to be 
spendin' it, not because they was anything to buy. 
I seen a fella the other day light a cigarette with 
one o' these here dirty twenty-franc notes. He was 
sick o' carrying it round. And they was another 
fella went up to one o' these here village belles and 
slipped her a hundred francs. He never seen her 
before, and he won't never see her again. He just 
says * Souvenir' and let it go at that." 
* "Did she take it?" 

"Oh, I guess not! She's to gay Paree by this 
time already." 

"She won't burn up that town with a hundred 
francs." 

"No, but all these girls don't think o' nothin' 
but gettin' there. From what I seen of it, I'd just 
as soon be in Akron." 

"Oh, I'd hardly say that!" 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 85 

"Talk about spendin' money! They was a 
poor fella here last week that got rid of a lot of it. 
He bought himself a bottle o' champagne wine. I 
don't think he'd tasted it before, but it's cheap over 
here. So he got a hold o' this bottle and poured it 
into him like it was excelsior water, and it acted on 
him like it was laughin' gas. He went up alongside 
the officers' billet and sang 'em a vocal solo. The 
captain heard him — you could of heard him in San 
Francisco — and the captain come out and invited 
him in. And when he got him in there he says: 
'So-and-So, how much did this little bun cost you ?' 
So the fella told him a buck and a half. So the 
captain says: 'You've underestimated the amount 
by about seventy bucks. You'll get your next pay 
the last day of October.' " 

I asked my new friend how he liked his billet. 

"Great!" he said. "I and a couple other fellas 
has a room next to a pig on one side and a flock o' 
chickens on the other. We never get lonesome, and 
it makes it nice and handy when we want some ham 
and eggs. I know one fella that rooms next to a 
settlement o' rats. Night times he sets his flash- 



86 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

light so's it throws a narrow path o' light acrost 
the floor, then he puts a little piece o' meat in the 
path and stands over it with a bayonet. When Mr. 
Rat gets there the fella comes down whang with 
the baj^onet and fastens him to the floor. It's good 
target practise, and he'd ought to be sure fire by 
the time it's Huns instead o' rats." 

"Maybe," said I, "the Huns would know better 
than to come out in the light." 

"They'd go anywheres for a piece o' meat," said 
the private. 

He had to depart and report for muster. We 
took another road home, a road frequented by sheep 
and railroad crossings, both of which slow you up 
considerably. 

In France the gates — strong iron ones — at grade 
crossings are kept closed except when some one 
wants to cross the tracks. The some one makes 
known his desire by tooting his horn or shouting, 
and the gatekeeper — usually an old lady with the 
pipe-smoking habit — comes out of her shack and 
opens the gates, expending anywhere from ten min- 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 87 

utes to half an hour on the task. The salary at- 
tached to the position is the same as that of a 
French private: ten centimes a day, which is two 
cents in regular money. I presume the gatekeepers 
have a hot time in the old town on pay night. 

As for the sheep, when you come up behind them 
you might as well resign yourself to staying be- 
hind them till they reach the village for which they 
are headed. They won't get out of the way of their 
own accord, and neither the dog nor the aged shep- 
herd will make any effort to sidetrack them. 

Having led them into the village, the shepherd 
proceeds to deliver them to their respective owners. 
He stops in front of a house, plays a certain tune 
on his horn, and the sheep or sheeps belonging to 
that house step out of ranks and sheepishly re- 
tire for the night, or perhaps sit up a while in the 
parlor and talk war with the family. 

There must be a lot of intermarrying among 
the sheeps of one village. A great many of those 
in the flock we saw looked enough alike to be cousins 
or something. 



88 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

Somebody suggested a poker game for this eve- 
ning's entertainment, but I got all I wanted of that 
great sport coming across the bounding blue. 

It has rained only an hour in two days, and the 
boys say we'll get it good to-morrow. 

Saturday, September 1, In an American Camp. 

As exclusively predicted by everybody, it was 
pouring when we arose this morning, but rain 
doesn't keep you indoors in France. If it did, you 
would live indoors. 

We splashed the thirty miles to the other end of 
the camp and inflicted ourselves on a major of 
marines. He seemed deliberately unfriendly at first, 
but it was only his manner. After five minutes of 
awkward monosyllabic dialogue he gave us the 
usual refreshments and took us out to see the town, 
the name of which should be Mud if it isn't. 

"This is a grand climate," he said. "They must 
have had conscription to get people to live here." 

He took us to the camp kitchen, of which he 
was evidently and justly proud. It was a model of 
convenience and cleanliness. He spoke to the cook. 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 89 

"Are you very busy ?" he asked. 

"No, sir," was the reply. 

"Then I'd shave if I were you," said the major. 

"Daily shaving," he told us when we got out- 
side, "ought to be compulsory in our army as it 
is in the British. When a man hasn't shaved he 
isn't at his best, physically, morally, or mentally. 
When he has he's got more confidence in himself; 
his morale is better. Shaving has a psychological 
effect, and I try to impress my men with the im- 
portance of it. They say it's a difficult operation 
here, but I guess if the Tommies can do it in the 
trenches, we can in these billets." 

We remarked on the increasing popularity of 
mustaches among the men. 

"I don't object to them," said the major. 
"Neither do I see any sense to them. To my mind 
they're in a class w T ith monocles or an appendix. 
But so long as the men keep their cheeks and chins 
smooth, they're at liberty to wear as much of a mis- 
placed eyebrow as they can coax out." 

The major showed us his hospital and his den- 
tist shop and marched us up a steep hill, where, in 



90 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

the rain, we saw a great many interesting things 
and promised not to write about them. 

After lunch we decided it would be patriotic to 
go home and remove our wet clothes. In rnj case, 
this meant spending the rest of the day in my room, 
and that's where I am. 

Sunday, September #. Paris. 

The driver assigned to take me to the train, 
which left from the next village this morning, lost 
his way, and we reached the station just as the en- 
gine was sounding the Gaili-Curci note that means 
All Aboard. There was no time to buy a ticket, 
and you can't pay a cash fare on a train in France. 
But the conductor, or whatever you call him here, 
said I could get a ticket at the destination, Paris ; 
in fact, I must get a ticket or spend the rest of my 
unnatural life wandering about the station. 

I found a seat in a compartment in which were a 
young American officer, beginning his forty-eight 
hours' leave, and a young French lady who looked 
as if she had been in Paris before. The young 
officer and I broke into conversation at once. The 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 91 

young lady didn't join in till we had gone nearly 
twenty kilomet's. 

Captain Jones, which isn't his name, called atten- 
tion to the signs on the window warning MM. Les 
Voyageurs to keep their anatomies indoors. The 
signs were in three languages. "Ne pas Pencher 
au Dehors," said the French. The English was 
"Danger to Lean Outside." And the Wop: "Non 
Sporgere" — very brief. It was evident that a 
fourth variation of the warning had been torn off, 
and it didn't require a William Burns to figure out 
in what language it had been written. 

"If there were a boche on this train," said Cap- 
tain Jones, "he could lean his head off without hurt- 
ing any one's feelings." 

"Languages are funny," continued the captain 
sagely. "The French usually need more words 
than we do to express the same thought. I believe 
that explains why they talk so fast — they've got 
so much more to say." 

I inquired whether he knew French. 

"Oh, yes," he said. "I've been over here so long 
that I can even tell the money apart." 



92 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

The dining-car conductor came in to ask whether 
we wanted the first or second "serie" luncheon. You 
must reserve your seat at table on trains here or 
you can't eat. We decided on the second, and so 
did our charming compartment mate. Captain 
Jones, supposing she could not understand English, 
said: "Shall you take her to lunch or shall I?" 

I was about to be magnanimous when she re- 
marked, with a scornful glance at the captain: "I 
shall myself take me to lunch if monsieur has no 
objection." 

The cap was temporarily groggy, but showed 
wonderful recuperative powers and in five minutes 
convinced her that he would toss himself into the 
Seine if she refused to eat with us. She accepted, 
after some stalling that convinced me she had been 
cordially inclined all the while. 

General polite conversation ensued, and soon came 
the inevitable French question : How many Amer- 
ican soldiers were there in France? I have heard 
it asked a million times, and I have heard a million 
different answers. The captain gave the truthful 
reply : "I don't know." 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 93 

"This war," he said, "should be called the War 
of Rumors. The war will be over by Christmas. 
The war won't be over for ten years. The boche 
is starving. The Allies are getting fat. The 
boche has plenty to eat. The Allies are dying of 
hunger. Our last transport fleet sank five subs. 
Ou¥ last transport fleet was sunk by a whole flotilla 
of subs. Montenegro's going to make a separate 
peace with Bosnia. There is talk of peace negotia- 
tions between Hungary and Indiana. Ireland, Bra- 
zil and Oklahoma are going to challenge the world. 
They're going to move the entire war to the Bal- 
kans and charge admission. The Kaiser's dying of 
whooping cough. You can learn anything you want 
to or don't want to know. Why" — this to me — 
"don't you fellas print the truth?" 

"And where," I asked him, "would you advise 
us to go and get it ?" 

"The same place I got it," said the captain. 

"And what is it?" 

"I don't know." 

We adjourned to the diner. A sign there said: 
"Non Fumeurs." The captain pointed to it. 



94 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

"That's brief enough," he said. "That's once 
when the French is concise. But you ought to see 
the Chinese for that. I was in a town near the 
British front recently where some Chinese laborers 
are encamped. In the station waiting-room, it says : 
'No Smoking' in French, English, Russian and 
Italian. The Russian is something like 'Do notski 
smokevitch,' and the Italian is 'Non Smokore'. Re- 
cently they have added a Chinese version, and it's 
longer than the Bible. A moderate smoker could 
disobey the rules forty times before he got through 
the first chapter and found out what they were 
driving at." 

Be that as it may, I have observed that everybody 
in France smokes whenever and wherever he or she 
desires, regardless of signs. We did now, and so 
did our guest, while waiting for the first course, 
which was black bread baked in a brickyard. 

"I would love to go to America," said mademoi- 
selle. 

"You wouldn't care for it," replied the captain 
promptly. "It's too wild." 

"How is it wild?" 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 95 

"Every way: manners, habits, morals. The ma- 
jority of the people, of course, are Indians, and 
you just can't make them behave." 

She asked whether either of us had ever been in 
New York. The captain said he'd passed through 
there once on the way to Coney Island. She wanted 
to know if New York was bigger than Paris. "It's 
bigger than France," said Captain Jones. 

Monsieur was trying to make a game of her. 

"Well, anyway," said the captain, "you could 
lose France in Texas." 

What was Texas? 

"Texas," said the captain, "is the place they send 
soldiers when they've been bad. It's way out west, 
near Chicago." 

The lady had heard of Chicago. 

"This gentleman works there," said the captain. 
"He's part Indian, but he was educated at Carlisle 
and is somewhat civilized. He gets wild only on 
occasions." 

The lady regarded me rather scaredly. 

"He lives on the plains outside the city," con- 
tinued the captain, "and rides to his work and back 



96 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

on a zebra. Practically all the suburban savages 
have zebras, and the Chicago traffic police have a 
fierce time handling them during their owners' work- 
ing hours. They run wild around the streets and 
in the department stores, and snap at women, espe- 
cially brunettes." 

We had attained the potato course. The French 
positively will" not serve potatoes as other than a 
separate course. I was about to help myself to a 
generous portion when the captain cried: "Here! 
Better leave those things alone. You know what 
they do to you." 

I told him I didn't believe two or three would 
hurt, and proceeded to take three. 

"When a half Indian eats potatoes," said the 
captain, "he usually forgets himself and runs 
amuck." 

Our guest probably didn't know what a muck was, 
but it had an unpleasant sound, and the look she 
gave me was neither friendly nor trusting. 

"The greatest difference between France and 
America," continued Captain Jones, "is in the peo- 
ple. In America a man ordinarily takes the initia- 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 97 

tive in striking up an acquaintance with a woman. 
He has to speak to her before she'll speak to him. 
This would never do in France, where the men are 
too shy. Then there's a difference in the way men 
treat their wives and horses. Americans use whips 
instead of clubs. And Americans have funny ideas 
about their homes. Private bedrooms and play- 
rooms are provided for their pets — zebras, lizards 
and wild cats — and the little fellows are given to 
understand that they must remain in them and not 
run all over the house, like one of your cows." 

He paused to ask me how the potatoes were act- 
ing. I said it was too soon to tell, but I felt a little 
dizzy in the head. He suggested it were better to 
go back to our compartment, where there were less 
things to throw in the event of my reaching the 
throwing stage. 

"On the other hand," I said, "if I am deprived of 
knives, forks and plates, I will pick on human be- 
ings, and I usually aim out the windows." 

But he said he was sick of the atmosphere in the 
diner. We asked for 1'addition and argued over who 
should pay it. I won, and when he had been given 



98 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

his change we returned to our own car, where 
mademoiselle demonstrated her fear of my expected 
outbreak by going to sleep. 

We turned our attention to the scenery, the most 
striking feature of which was the abundance of 
boche prisoners at work in the fields. 

"Lucky stiffs!" said the captain. "The war is 
over for them if they can just manage not to 
escape, and I guess there's no difficulty about that. 
Better food than the soldiers, a soft job, and a bed 
to sleep in. And wages besides. Every private in 
the Fritz army would surrender if the officers hadn't 
given them a lot of bunk about the way German 
prisoners are treated. They make them believe we 
cut off their feet and ears and give them one peanut 
and a glass of water every two weeks." 

Paris hove into view, and we quarreled about the 
girl. The fair thing, we decided, would be to turn 
over her and her baggage to a porter and wish her 
many happy returns of the day. We were spared 
this painful duty, however, for when she awoke she 
treated both of us as strangers. And the gentle- 
man who attended to her baggage was not a porter, 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 99 

but a French aviator, waiting on the station plat- 
form for that very purpose. 

"She'll tell him," guessed the captain, "that an 
American soldier and half Indian tried to flirt with 
her on the train, but she froze them out." 

Captain Jones stuck with me till my exit ticket 
was procured, a chore that ate up over an hour. 
Then we climbed into a dreadnought and came to 
this hotel, where I sat right down and versified as 
follows : 

TO AN AMERICAN SOLDIER 

If you don't like the nickname Sammy, 

If it's not all a nickname should be, 

You can pick out Pat or Mike, 

Whatever name you like — 

It won't make no difference to me. 

Want a Thomas or Harry or Dick name? 

Dost prefer to be called Joe or Lou? 

You've a right to your choice of a nickname; 

Oh, Mr. Yank, it's up to you. 



MY ADVENTURES AT THE BRITISH 
FRONT 

Monday, September 3. Paris. 

In this morning's mail was a letter from Some- 
where in London, replying favorably to my request 
to go to the British front. I was directed to take 
the letter to the assistant provost marshal, who 
would slip me a pass and inform me as to the details 
of the trip. 

At the A. P. M.'s I was given the pass and with 
it "an undertaking to he signed by all intending 
visitors to the front." There are ten rules in the 
undertaking, and some of them are going to be 
hard to obey. For example: 

"I understand that it is impossible to arrange 
for me to see relatives serving with the fighting 

forces." 

"I will not visit the enemy front during the pres- 
ent war." 

100 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 101 

But No. 6 is the tough one: 

"In no circumstances will I deliver a political or 
electioneering speech to troops." 

I must pray for strength to resist natural im- 
pulses along this line. 

Wednesday morning, said the A. P. M., would be 
our starting time. And he told us when and where 
to take the train — "us" because I am to be accom- 
panied by a regular correspondent, one who carries 
a cane and everything. 

Mr. Gibbons, the regular correspondent, informs 
me I must wear a uniform, and to-morrow morning 
I am to try on his extra one, which he has kindly 
offered. 

Another chore scheduled for to-morrow is the 
squaring of myself with the boss of the French 
Maison de la Presse, who invited me to visit the 
devastated territory Thursday and Friday. The 
invitation was accepted, but the British and French 
dates conflict, and I would rather see one real, live 
front than any number of broken-down barns and 
bodied trees. 



102 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

Tuesday, September 4. Paris. 

I reported, after the French idea of breakfast, 
at the Maison de la Presse. This is situate on the 
fourth floor of a building equipped with an elevator 
that proves the fallacy of the proverb "What goes 
up must come down." You can dimly see it at the 
top of the shaft, and no amount of button pushing 
or rope pulling budges it. 

During the long climb I rehearsed the speech of 
apology and condolence framed last night, and won- 
dered whether monsieur would be game and try to 
smile or break down completely or fly into a rage. 
He was game, and he not only tried to smile, but 
succeeded. And his smile was in perfect simulation 
of relief. These French are wonderful actors. 

I returned thence to Mr. Gibbons' room for my 
fitting. His extra uniform consisted of a British 
officer's coat and riding breeches, puttees and shoes. 
Cap and khaki shirt I had to go out and purchase. 
The store I first selected was a gyp j oint and wanted 
twenty-seven francs for a cap. I went to another 
store and got exactly the same thing for twenty- 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 103 

six. A careful shopper can save a lot of money in 
Paris. 

Provided with cap and shirt, the Tatter costing 
a franc less than the former, I went to a secluded 
spot and tried on the outfit, Mr. Gibbons assist- 
ing. We managed the puttees in thirty-five minutes. 
It is said that a man working alone can don them 
in an hour, provided he is experienced. 

"You look," Mr. Gibbons remarked when I was 
fully dressed, "as if you had been poured into it." 

But I felt as if I hadn't said "when" quite soon 
enough. Mr. Gibbons and I differ in two important 
particulars — knee joints — and though I tried to 
seem perfectly comfortable, my knees were fairly 
groaning to be free of the breeches and out in the 
open fields. 

"Wear it the rest of the day and get used to 
it," advised Mr. Gibbons. 

"No," I said. "I don't want to rumple it all up. 
I want to keep it neat for to-morrow." And against 
his protest I tore myself out and resumed my hum- 
ble Chicago garb. 

It's no wonder regular correspondents and Brit- 



104 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

ish officers are obliged to wear canes. The wonder 
is that they don't use crutches. 

We leave at nine to-morrow morning. This 
means that myself and puttees will have to get up 
at four. 

Wednesday, September 5. With the British. 

The major has a very good sense of the fitness of 
things. The room where I'm writing, by candle- 
light, is the best guest room in our chateau and was 
once occupied by the queen. 

The rules of the household call for the dousing 
of down-stairs glims at eleven o'clock. After that 
you may either remain down there in total dark- 
ness or come up here and bask in the brilliant rays 
of a candle. You should, I presume, be sleepy 
enough to go right to bed, but you're afraid you 
might forget something if you put off the day's 
record till to-morrow. 

I overslept myself, as they say, and had to get 
Mr. Gibbons to help with the puttees. The lower 
part of the breeches, I found, could be loosened just 
enough to make the knee area inhabitable. 




'You look as if you bad been poured into it' 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 105 

We skipped breakfast and reached the station in 
a taxi without hitting anything. It was fifteen min- 
utes before train time, but there wasn't a vacant 
seat in the train. A few of the seats were occupied 
by poilus, and the rest by poilus' parcels and news- 
papers. A Frenchman always gets to a nine o'clock 
train by seven-thirty. He picks one seat for him- 
self and one or two on each side of him for his 
impedimenta. This usually insures him privacy 
and plenty of room, for it is considered an overt 
act even to pick up a magazine and sit in its place. 
Mr. Gibbons and I walked from one end of the train 
to the other and half-way back again without any 
one's taking a hint. We climbed into a carriage 
just as she started to move. There were six seats 
and three occupants. We inquired whether all the 
seats were reserved, and were given to understand 
that they were, the owners of three having gone to 
a mythical dining-car. 

We went into the aisle and found standing room 
among the Australians and Canadians returning 
from their leave. One of the former, a young, red- 
headed, scrappy-looking captain, smiled sympathet- 



106 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

ically and broke open a conversation. I was glad 
of it, for it gave me an opportunity of further 
study of the language. I am a glutton for lan- 
guages, and the whole day has been a feast. We 
have listened to six different kinds — Australian, 
Canadian, British, French, Chinese and Harvard. 
I have acquired an almost perfect understanding of 
British, Australian and Canadian, which are some- 
what similar, and of Harvard, which I studied a 
little back home. French and Chinese I find more 
difficult, and I doubt that any one could master 
either inside of a month or so. 

The red-headed captain remarked on the crowded 
condition of the trine. That is Australian as well 
as British for train. The Canadian is like our 
word, and the French is spelled the same, but is 
pronounced as if a goat were saying it. Lack of 
space prevents the publication of the Chinese term. 

One of the captain's best pals, he told us, had 
just been severely wounded. He was a gime one, 
though even smaller than the captain. The cap- 
tain recalled one night when he, the pal, took pris- 
oner a boche lieutenant who stood over six feet. 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 107 

Fritz was asked whether he spoke English. He 
shook his head. He was asked whether he spoke 
French. He lost his temper and, in English, called 
the entire continent of Australia a bad name. The 
captain's little pal then marched him off to the 
proper authority, to be questioned in English. On 
the way the captain's little pal made him take off 
Ins helmet and give it to him. This was as punish- 
ment for what Fritz had said about Australia. 

Before the proper authority Fritz was as sweet- 
tempered as a bloody bear. This puzzled the 
proper authority, for making a boche prisoner is 
doing him a big favor. 

"What iles you?" asked the authority when Fritz 
had refused to reply to any of a dozen questions. 
"You ine't the first bloody boche officer we've tiken." 

Then Fritz bared his grievance. He didn't mind, 
he said, being a prisoner. The size of his captor 
was the thing that galled. "And for Gott's sake," 
he added, "make him give back my helmet." 

The proper authority turned to the captain's 
little pal. "He's your prisoner," he said. "What 
do you want to do with the helmet?" 



108 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

"Keep it, sir," said the captain's little pal. 

And it will be used back in Australia some day 
to illustrate the story, which by that time will 
doubtless have more trimmings. 

"But how about Fritz?" I asked. "When he 
gets home and tells the same story, he'll have noth- 
ing with which to prove it." 

"He ine't agoin' to tell the sime story." 

We were welcomed at our destination by a cap- 
tain, another regular correspondent, and two good 
English cars. The captain said he was expecting 
another guest on this train, a Harvard professor 
on research work bent. 

"I have no idea what he looks like," said the cap- 
tain. 

"I have," said Mr. Gibbons and I in concert, but 
it went over the top. 

The professor appeared at length, and we were 
all whisked some thirty kilometers to a luncheon 
worth having. Afterward we were taken to the 
Chinese camp. Chinatown, we'll call it, is where the 
Chink laborers are mobilized when they first ar- 
rive and kept until their various specialties are dis- 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 109 

covered. Then each is assigned to the job he can 
do best. I was told I mustn't mention the number 
of Chinamen now in France, but I can say, in their 
own language, it's a biggee lottee. 

They wear a uniform that consists of blue over- 
alls, a blue coat, and no shirt whatever, which, I 
think, is bad advertising for their national trade. 
They brought shirts with them, it seems, but are 
more comfy without. 

The minimum wage is three francs a day. Two- 
thirds of what they earn is paid them here, the other 
third given to their families in China. The sys- 
tem of hiring is unique. No names are used, prob- 
ably because most Chinks have Sam Lee as a 
monniker, and the paymaster would get all mixed 
up with an army of Sam Lees. They are numbered 
and their finger prints are taken by an agent in 
China. He sends these identification marks to the 
camp here, and when the Chinks arrive they are 
checked up by a finger-print expert from Scotland 
Yard. This gentleman said there had been several 
cases where the Chinaman landing here was a ringer, 
some "friend" back home having signed up and 



then coaxed the ringer to come in ;e, belier- 

and that his profit would be the one-third share of 
the wage that is paid in China. The ringer's f amlly 

— ;__--. ':-: ..;/: :u: ::" ::$ yiv.v..;. :;: :*...:. ;:" :;vr-:. 
would make no difference to the ringer s friend. 



Til. r :_.: 


r-print system serves not only to prevent 




. of cute little schemes like that, but 


:•: .v/_;-j.---e 


.. ~ - - . . . . : . : 


rrinTi ... 


.: "..-'- ...v. .: - . ". _:~- - - v...__. 




:: i; ".: : :. .-: --::.-: 7..". -:.7_. ~___;__ :. ;::.- 


d_.~: i cj 


a Britisher. The Chinese had just had 


-'■ ~ : ■':' - ■'. 


r and were wild to spend. One of them 


5 ... .. j_. - 


mted a razor. Tie proprietor produced 


:c. ___, . :. 


ise, and the Chink handed oyer h 


-.:_■.; _.: ;- 


fen looking at the tooL Another wanted 




ne prop, gave him a straw with a band 


v.: -;.. 


lors of the rainbow. Hie C h .naman 


rvi :".: 


: \:v- v "■: :: v -■:;■- -'.:'..:--. :::_.-.:. v to 



Clunks who had been naugr: 7. ..eh was in a 

.::•:_:. : :-j:-;v ii : ~ v :r. — ". !:".. — :-._ ir.-v :-_.. 



MY FOUR WEEKS IX FRANCE 111 

in Chinese, the nature of his offense. One of them 
had been guilty of drinking water out of a fire 
bucket. The other had drunk something the oat at 

:.. V. v..-: — -nr..: :::■ :.::/. ::" '.-. in :" : ::. T ':.:; 
looked utterly wretched, and our guide told us the 
yirA-:':.::.—.- — i= -;.: ::::-: -:-• :.-: - :: :;:"i ":: r-" 7 :::: 
that a Chinaman's pride was his most Tumerable 

> t. : : . 

fire buck ntenced to wear his stock a whole 

day. He of the stew was on the last lap of a week's 
:-:r._:. 

" . ~ : L 

an interpreter. We asked him if he knew that the 
. d States ^as in the war against Germany. He 
'.u: .:: ::i :-:.: 
t before we left the settlement a Br:: 
flew over it. A Czink who was walking with us 
-:ook it for a Hun machine, for he 
looked up and said : ^TJloody boche f 

From Chinatown we were driren to the American 

:rs' Chateau, where gentlemen and correspond- 

:■:: S: . .' I~" = 



112 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

a real chateau, with a moat and everything. The 
major is our host. The major has seen most of 
his service in India and China. 

He said he was glad to meet us, which I doubt. 
The new arrivals, Mr. Gibbons, the Harvard pro- 
fessor and myself, were shown our rooms and in- 
formed that dinner would occur at eight o'clock. 
Before dinner we were plied with cocktails made by 
our friend, the captain. The ingredients, I believe, 
were ether, arsenic and carbolic acid in quantities 
not quite sufficient to cause death. 

Eleven of us gathered around the festal board. 
There were the major and his aids, three British 
captains, one with a monocle. There was the Har- 
vard professor, and the head of a certain American 
philanthropical organization, and his secretary. 
And then there were us, me and Mr. Gibbons and 
Mr. O'Flaherty and Mr. Somner, upstarts in the 
so-called journalistic world. 

The dinner was over the eighteen-course course, 
the majority of the courses being liquid. I wanted 
to smoke between the fish and the sherry, but Mr. 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 113 

O'Flaherty whispered to me that it wasn't done till 
the port had been served. 

Mention was made of the Chinese camp, and there 
ensued a linguistic battle between the major and the 
Harvard professor. The latter explained the theory 
of the Chinese language. He made it as clear as 
mud. In the Chinese language, he said, every 
letter was a word, and the basis of every word was 
a picture. For example, if you wanted to say "my 
brother," you drew a picture of your brother in 
your mind and then expressed it in a word, such as 
woof or whang. If you wanted a cigar, you 
thought of smoke and said "puff" or "blow," but 
3^ou said it in Chinese. 

Mr. Gibbons broke up the battle of China by 
asking the major whether I might not be allowed 
to accompany him and Mr. O'Flaherty and one of 
the captains on their perilous venture co-morrow 
night. They are going to spend the night in a 
Canadian first-line trench. 

"I'm sorry," said the major, "but the arrange- 
ment has been made for only three." 



114 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

I choked back tears of disappointment. 

The major has wished on me for to-morrow a 
trip through the reconquered territory. My com- 
panions are to be the captain with the monocle, the 
Harvard professor, the philanthropist, and the 
philanthropist's secretary. We are to start off at 
eight o'clock. Perhaps I can manage to oversleep. 

Thursday, September 6. With the British. 

I did manage it, and the car had left when I got 
down-stairs. Mr. Gibbons and Mr. O'Flaherty 
were still here, and the three of us made another ef- 
fort to get me invited to the party to-night. The 
major wouldn't fall for it. 

Mr. Gibbons and Mr. O'Flaherty motored to an 
artillery school, the understanding being that they 
were to be met at six this evening by one of our 
captains and taken to the trench. I was left here 
alone with the major. 

We lunched together, and he called my attention 
to the mural decorations in the dining-room. It's 
a rural mural, and in the foreground a young lady 
is milking a cow. She is twice as big as the cow 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 115 

and is seated in the longitude of the cow's head. 
She reaches her objective with arms that would 
make Jess Willard jealous. In another area a lamb 
is conversing with its father and a couple of squir- 
rels which are larger than either lamb or parent. 
In the lower right-hand corner is an ox with its 
tongue in a tin can, and the can is labeled Ox 
Tongue for fear some one wouldn't see the point. 
Other figures in the pictures are dogs, foxes and 
chickens of remarkable size and hue. 

"We had a French painter here a few days ago," 
said the major. "I purposely seated him where he 
could look at this picture. He took one look, then 
asked me to change his seat." 

The major inquired whether I had noticed the 
picture of the chateau which decorates the doors of 
our automobiles. 

"When you go out to-morrow," he said, "you'll 
observe that none of the army cars is without its 
symbol. An artillery car has its picture of a gun. 
Then there are different symbols for the different 
divisions. I saw one the other day with three in- 
terrogation marks painted on it. I inquired what 



116 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

they meant and was told the car belonged to the 
Watts division. Do you see why?" 

I admitted that I did. 

"Well, I didn't," said the major, "not till it was 
explained. It's rather stupid, I think." 

This afternoon an American captain, anonymous 
of course, called on us. He is stopping at G. H. 
Q., which is short for General Headquarters, his 
job being to study the British strategic methods. 
He and the major discussed the differences between 
Americans and Englishmen. 

"The chief difference is in temperature," said the 
captain. "You fellows are about as warm as a 
glacier. In America I go up to a man and say: 
{ My name is Captain So-an-So.' He replies: 
'Mine is Colonel Such-and-Such.' Then we shake 
hands and talk. But if I go to an Englishman and 
say: 'My name is Captain So-and-So,' he says: 
s Oh !' So I'm embarrassed to death and can't talk." 

" 'Strawnary !" said the major. 

At tea time a courier brought us the tidings that 
there'd been an air raid last Sunday at a certain 
hospital base. 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 117 

"The boche always does his dirty work on Sun- 
day," remarked the American captain. "It's queer, 
too, because that's the day that's supposed to be 
kept holy, and I don't see how the Kaiser squares 
himself with his friend Gott." 

I laughed, but the major managed to remain 
calm. 

The American captain departed after tea, and 
the major and I sat and bored each other till the 
Harvard professor and his illustrious companions 
returned. They told me I missed a very interesting 
trip. That's the kind of trip one usually misses. 

At dinner we resumed our enlightening discus- 
sion of Chinese, but it was interrupted when the 
major was called to the telephone. The message 
was from the captain who was supposed to meet 
Mr. Gibbons and Mr. O'Flaherty and take them to 
the trenches to spend the night. The captain re- 
ported that his machine had broken down with 
magneto trouble and he'd been unable to keep his 
appointment. He requested that the major have 
Mr. Gibbons and Mr. O'Flaherty located and 
brought home. 



118 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

This was done. The disappointed correspond- 
ents blew in shortly before closing time and confided 
to me their suspicion that the trouble with the cap- 
tain's machine had not been magneto, but (the 
censor cut out a good line here). 

To-morrow we are to be shown the main British 
training school and the hospital bases. 

Friday, September 7. With tlw British, 

We left the chateau at nine and reached the train- 
ing camp an hour later. 

We saw a squad of ineligibles drilling, boys 
under military age who had run away from home 
to get into the Big Game. Their parents had in- 
formed the authorities of their ineligibility, and the 
authorities had refused to enroll them. The boys 
had refused to go back home, and the arrangement 
is that they are to remain here and drill till they 
are old enough to fight. Some of them are as 
much as three years shy of the limit. 

The drill is made as entertaining as possible. 
The instructor uses a variation of our "Simon says : 
^Thumbs up'." "O'Grady" sits in for Simon. 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 119 

For example, the instructor says : "O'Grady says : 
'Right dress.' Left dress." The youth who "left 
dresses" without O'Grady's say-so is sent to the 
awkward squad in disgrace. 

Out of a bunch of approximately two hundred 
only two went through the drill perfectly. The 
other one hundred and ninety-eight underestimated 
the importance of O'Grady and sheepislily stepped 
out of line. The two perfectos looked as pleased as 
peacocks. 

We saw a bayonet drill with a tutor as vivacious 
and linguistically original as a football coach, and 
were then taken to the bomb-throwing school. The 
tutor here was as deserving of sympathy as a Bel- 
gian. A bomb explodes five seconds after you press 
the button. Many of the pupils press the button, 
then get scared, drop the bomb and run. The in- 
structor has to pick up the bomb and throw it away 
before it explodes and messes up his anatomy. And 
there's no time to stop and figure in what direction 
you're going to throw. 

The Maoris were our next entertainers. The 
Maoris are colored gemmen from New Zealand. 



120 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

They were being taught how to capture a trench. 
Before they left their own dugout they sang a bat- 
tle hymn that would make an American dance and 
scare a German to death. They went through their 
maneuvers with an incredible amount of pep and 
acted as if they could hardly wait to get into real 
action against the boche. Personally, I would have 
conscientious objections to fighting a Maori. 

Then we were shown a gas-mask dress rehearsal. 
A British gas mask has a sweet scent, like a hos- 
pital. You can live in one, they say, for twenty- 
four hours, no matter what sort of poison the lovely 
Huns are spraying at you. We all tried them on 
and remarked on their efficacy, though we knew 
nothing about it. 

We had lunch and were told we might make a 
tour of inspection of the hospitals in which the 
wounded lay. I balked at this and, instead, called 
on a Neenah, Wisconsin, doctor from whose knee 
had been extracted a sizable piece of shrapnel, the 
gift of last Sunday's bomb dropper. This doctor 
has been over but three weeks, and the ship that 
brought him came within a yard of stopping a 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 121 

torpedo. Neither war nor Wisconsin has any ter- 
rors left for him. 

To-morrow we are to be taken right up to the 
front, dressed in helmets, gas masks, and every- 
thing. 

Saturday, September 8. With the British, 

Two machine loads, containing us and our hel- 
mets, masks, and lunch baskets, got away to an 
early start and headed for the Back of the Front. 
In one car were the Captain with the Monocle, the 
Harvard prof., and the American philanthropist. 
The baggage, the philanthropist's secretary, and I 
occupied the other. The secretary talked inces- 
santly and in reverent tones of his master, whom he 
called The Doctor. One would have almost be- 
lieved he considered me violently opposed to The 
Doctor (which I wasn't, till later in the day) and 
was trying to win me over to his side with eulogistic 
oratory. 

The first half of our journey was covered at the 
usual terrifying rate of speed. The last half was 
a snail's crawl which grew slower and slower as we 



122 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

nearcd our objective. Countless troops, afoot and 
in motors, hundreds of ammunition and supply 
trucks, and an incredible number of businesslike and 
apparently new guns, these took up a healthy three- 
quarters of the road and, despite our importance, 
didn't hunch to let us pass. 

When we sounded our horns to warn of our ap- 
proach, the subalterns, or whatever you call them, 
would look round, stand at attention and salute, 
first the Captain with the Monocle, and then, when 
our car came up, me. Me because I was the only 
one in the second machine who wore a British officer's 
cap. I returned about three salutes, blushing pain- 
fully, and then threw my cap on the floor of the 
car and rode exposed. Saluting is a wear and tear 
on the right arm, and being saluted makes you feel 
slackerish and camouflagy, when you don't deserve 
it. 

We attained the foot of the observation hill round 
noon, left our machines, and ate our picnic lunch, 
consisting of one kind of sandwiches and three kinds 
of wine. Then we accomplished the long climb, 
stopping half-way up to don helmets and masks. 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 123 

Our guide told us that the boche, when not otherwise 
pleasantly employed, took a few shots at where we 
were standing to test his long-distance aim. 

I wore the mask as long as I could, which was 
about half an hour. It was unpleasantly reminis- 
cent of an operation I once had, the details of which 
I would set down here if I had time. Without it, 
I found, I could see things much more plainly. 
Through strong field glasses the British trenches 
were discernible. The German front line was be- 
hind a ridge, two hundred yards away — from the 
British, not us — and invisible. No drive was in 
progress, but there was the steady boom, boom of 
heavy guns, the scary siren, with a bang at the 
end, of grenades, and an occasional solo in a throaty 
barytone which our captain told us belonged to Mr. 
Trench Mortar. 

The firing was all in one direction — toward the 
northeast. Fritz was not replying, probably be- 
cause he had no breath to waste in casual repartee. 

Convinced that our hill was a zone of safety, for 
this afternoon at least, I wanted to stay up there 
and look and listen till it was time to go home. 



im MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

But our captain had arranged a trip to a sniping 
school, and our captain would rather have broken 
his monocle than have made the slightest alteration 
in the program for the day. 

To the sniping school we went, and saw the 
snipers sniping on their snipes. It was just like 
the sniping school I had visited at the American 
camp, and I got pretty mad at our captain for 
dragging us away from a sight far more interest- 
ing. But he redeemed himself by having the major 
in charge show us real, honest-to-goodness camou- 
flage, staged by an expert. 

We were taken to a point two hundred yards dis- 
tant from a trench system. 

"Standing up in front of one of those trenches," 
said the major, "there's a sergeant in costume. 
He's in plain sight. Now you find him." 

Well, we couldn't find him, and we gave up. 

"Move, Sergeant!" shouted the major. 

The sergeant moved and, sure enough, there he 
was! 

"I had him spotted all the time," said The Doc- 
tor. 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 125 

The major directed the sergeant to change to a 
costume of a different hue. When the change had 
been made we were required to turn our backs till 
he had "hidden" himself again. Again he was "in 
plain sight," and again we had to give up. Again 
he was ordered to move, and we saw him, this time 
in colors diametrically opposed to those of his first 
garb. 

"I had him spotted all the time," said The Doc- 
tor. 

The sergeant went through his entire repertory 
of tricks, but the rest must not be reported. 

It occurred to me on the way back to our ma- 
chines that some football coach could make a fish 
out of the defensive team by camouflaging his back 
field. 

Our captain and the Harvard prof, climbed into 
the front car, leaving The Doctor, his secretary, 
and me to bring up the rear. The sec. sat with the 
driver ; The Doctor and I in the back seat. 

"How long have you been over here?" inquired 
The Doctor at length. 

I told him. 



126 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

"Plow many American soldiers are there in 
France?" 

I told him. 

After an impressive pause, he said: 

"As a matter of fact, there are really — " And 
he increased my estimate by four hundred per cent. 
"Of course," he continued, "I have the right figures. 
They were furnished me by the Defense League be- 
fore I left home. They naturally wouldn't give 
them to a writer because they don't want them pub- 
lished." 

"And naturally," says I, "whenever they tell a 
writer anything in strict confidence, he rushes to 
the nearest Local and Long Distance Telephone 
Booth and gets Wilhelmstrasse on the wire." 

"Oh, no," said The Doctor. "But a writer 
might think it was his duty to send the correct in- 
formation to his paper." 

"Did you ever hear of the censorship?" I asked 
him. 

"There are ways of eluding it." 

"And do you think all writers are that kind?" 

He shrugged a fat shoulder. 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 127 

"Not all, possibly a very few. But one never 
can tell the right kind from the wrong." 

His guard was down, and I took careful aim: 

"Do you think the Defense League used good 
judgment in entrusting that secret to you, when 
you spill it to the first irresponsible reporter you 
happen to run across?" 

If I hadn't won this argument, I wouldn't re- 
peat it. 

Not until we reached our chateau did I realize 
why I had been so catty. I'd gone without my tea. 

Sunday, September 9. Paris. 

Mr. Gibbons and I this morning bade good-by to 
our genial hosts and were driven to the station at 
which we arrived last Wednesday. On the Paris- 
bound train I wondered audibly why the servants 
had given me that queer look before we left. 

"Did you tip them?" asked Mr. Gibbons. 

"Certainly !" I snapped. 

"I'll bet I know," said Mr. Gibbons. "You prob- 
ably packed your own suit-case." 

He was right. 



VI 



HOW I DIDN'T DRIVE MAJOR BLANK'S 
CAR TO CAMP SUCH-AND-SUCH 

Monday, September 10. Paris. 

The American major who owns the car which Mr. 
Kiley drove down from Le Havre, whither it had 
been sent by the man who bought it in London for 
the American major — well, anyway, this American 
major, he's in the artillery camp at Such-and-Such, 
and he wants me to bring it down there for him. 
I've never handled, or, rather, footled one of the 
little birds, but it's something everybody should 
learn, like French and auction and how to swim. 
Besides, I want to see the artillery camp. So I'm 
accepting the commission and intend to get busy 
to-morrow morning. 

Tuesday, September 11. Paris. 

With an American pass and an order for the car, 
I taxied to the United States army garage, in the 
Quai Debilly. 

128 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 129 

"Avez-vous fixed vous with passes?" inquired a 
friendly inmate of the garage. 

I showed him my American card. 

"That isn't bien suffisant," he said. "You'll have 
to get a pink one to go through the French army 
zone." 

I recalled then our troubles on a previous auto- 
mobile trip and was glad he had spoken. 

"Where do I go for that?" I inquired. 

"Go," said he, "to the Prefet de Ligne du Com- 
munications." Or something like that. 

"Ou is il?" 

"I think he's in the Rue Francois Premier." 

"And is the car all right ?" 

"I guess so. Nos haven't looked at it yet." 

I had let my taxi go, and twenty minutes were 
spent in getting another. It was another hour be- 
fore we located the prefet. 

A secretary examined my passport and American 
pass and took my dossier : 

Name, nationality, birthplace, age, ancestrj', real 
purpose in coming to France. Hair — black ; fore- 
head — high ; eyes — brown ; nose — prominent ; 



130 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

mouth — medium; chin — round; complexion — dark; 
height — six one and three-quarters. Sign here. 

"Now," said the sec, "monsieur will avez to come 
across avec a photophie." 

"I'm just out," I said. "I'd no idea Fd be so 
popular." 

"Nos can issue no passes sans a photophie," says 
he, so out I went in search of a rapid-fire studio. 

The driver pulled up in front of a gallery on the 
Rue de la Paix, where the artist promised to have 
six copies of my map printed by midi. 

To kill time I rode back to Billy's rue. 

"The car's on the blink," said my friend in 
French. "The connecting rod is lache and some 
bearings are burned out. Besides, vous would be 
a rummy to partir on these tires." 

"Comme beaucoup new ones do je need?" 

"Just plain quatre," says he. 

"Well," says I, "put them on and get busy avec 
the reparations. I want to start away before dark." 

"Ah, oui," says he, "but we have no tires and 
we have no tools to make the reparations avec." 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 131 

"Can't you get them?" 

"Vous devoir get them yourself." 

"Ou?" 

"At the branch factory of the ," and he said 

the name of the car right out loud. 

"Ou est le branch factory?" 

"II est in un suburb— Le Vallois-Perret. The 
address is 6163 Rue Corneille." 

"What tools are required?" 

"Une roue-tirer et un offset clef a vis." 

Which means a wheel puller and an offset wrench. 

"And can je aussi tires get there?" 

"Ah, oui." 

It was noon, and my trusting driver and I re- 
turned to the studio on the Rue de la Paix. The 
pictures weren't fini. They never are. 

"Take me to Maxim's," says I, "and we'll call it 
a half day." 

After lunch I walked back to the studio. The 
pictures were not fini, but would monsieur rester? 
Monsieur would. Monsieur rested till fourteen 
o'clock, got six photophies that had him looking 



132 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

more than ever like a German spy, and taxied back 
to the Rue Francois Premier. The prefet's joint 
was closed. 

I asked the driver how far it was out to Le Vallois- 
Perret. 

"Come on," he said, and I climbed in, but "come 
on," in French, means "I don't get you," so I had 
to repeat the directions four or five times. 

"Ah, oui," he said at last. "Le Vallois-Perret. 
Quatorze kilomet's." 

"What is that in American money?" 

"Come on," said the driver. 

"Hotel Con-tin-en-tal," I said. 

I'll tackle 'em afresh to-morrow morning. 

Wednesday, September 12. Paris. 

The prefet's secretary approved my picture and 
gave me a beautiful salmon-colored pass. It is good 
for five days, which is plenty, as I will come back 
on the train. 

At the city gates, en route to Le Vallois-Perret, 
my taxi and I were stopped and our essence meas- 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 133 

ured. If we brought back more than we took out, 
we would have to pay taxes on the difference. 

Quatorze kilomet's was a very conservative esti- 
mate of the distance, and it was nearly eleven when 
we reached Cornelia's rue and the branch factory. 

An American heard my plea for four new tires, 
an offset wrench, and a wheel puller. 

"It can't be done," he said. "All we do is own 
this place. But the French Government has taken 
it over and runs it." 

"But this is a United States army car," I said, 
"and we're supposed to be allies of the French." 

"Without special permission," said he, "you 
stand as much chance as if you were the Crown 
Prince." 

"Where can I get special permission?" 

"Your best bet is to see Captain Vandervelde. If 
anybody can fix it, he's the boy. You'll find him in 
the Passage de Haynau, Rue Croix Nivert." 

"What number?" 

"There is no number." 

I thanked him, or perhaps I forgot to, and re- 
turned to my taxi. 



134 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

"Passage de Haynau in Rue Croix Nivert," I 
said. 

"Q'numero?" 

"There ain't none." 

"Come on," demanded the driver. 

"I told you there was no number. We'll just 
have to keep looking till we find it." 

We convinced the guardian of the gate that we 
weren't trying to cheat on gasoline, and rolled into 
Rue Croix Nivert about thirteen o'clock. My 
chauffeur sat nonchalantly in his accustomed seat 
while I made a housa-to-house canvass of Ha3mau's 
Passage. The last house was the right one. I 
knew it in an instant, for when I entered the corri- 
dor a French sentry popped up and placed the end 
of his bayonet within an inch of Nose-prominent. 

"Captain Vandervelde," said I, making a short 
strategical retreat. 

"Come on," said Frenchy without lowering his 
sticker. 

A password was what he wanted, and Mr. Poin- 
care had forgotten to call me up and give me the 
correct one for the day. I produced a two-franc 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 135 

piece and held it out. The sentry withdrew his 
weapon, accepted the coin, and allowed me to pass. 

"The word," I thought to myself, "must be Lib- 
erie, Egalite, Fraternite." 

Captain Vandervelde was in and made me wait 
only half an heure, the while I thought more than 
once of yon taxi. Finally I was summoned to the 
inner office. 

"What can je faire pour vous?" he inquired. 

I told him I wanted an order on the branch 

factory for some tools and four new tires. 

"Rien fairing on the tires," he said. 

"Pourquoi?" I asked him. 

"Orders pour tires must come from the Maison 
de la Guerre." 

"Can you fix me for the tools ?" 

"Ah, oui. What tools voulez-vous ?" 

"Une roue-tirer et un offset clef a vis." 

"Votre papers, s'il vous plait." 

I handed him passport, American pass, and sal- 
mon-pink card. He glanced them over, then began 
rummaging in a drawer. I knew what was coming 
— another dossier. 



136 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

"Avez-vous une photophie?" he asked. 

"Ah, oui," says I, and slipped him one of the re- 
maining five. 

He kept the dossier and photophie for the amuse- 
ment of himself and progeny. He gave me only a 
mauve card which said I was entitled to one wheel 
puller and one left-handed offset monkey wrench. 

I told my driver we had to hurry right back to 
Le Vallois-Perret. He looked crestfallen. 

"Je have had no dejeuner," he said. 

"Neither have je," I said, and climbed in. 

Thursday, September IS. Paris. 

Up early and to the garage. Delivered the tools. 
"Vous had better buy a tire pump," said my ad- 
viser. 

"Je suppose," said I, "that I'll have to get an 
order for one from Papa JofFre." 

"No," he said. "That's une chose vous can buy 
sans an order." 

"Voulez-vous get to work on the car right away ?" 

"Ah, oui," says he. 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 137 

I asked my chauffeur to take me to a maison du 
tire pumps. We found one on the Champs Elysees. 
Other things for sale in the store were watches and 
perfumery. I proceeded thence to French General 
Headquarters. 

The gentleman authorized to sign orders for 
tires received me cordially and spoke English. 

"Certainly," he said in answer to my request, "if 
the car is for an American officer. And what is 
the license number?" 

I had to confess I didn't know. 

"Well," said he, "you go to the garage and find 
out. Then come back and I'll give you the order." 

I went to the garage to find out. There was no 
license. 

"Ou can je get one?" I asked my friend. 

He gave me the address of the license bureau, on 
Rue Oskaloosa or something. The driver knew 
where it was. 

Monsieur du License surprised me by asking for 
a picture and taking my description, which I could 
almost have rhymed by this time — 



138 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

Hair jet black, but a paucity of it; 

Forehead high as the Eiffel tower; 
Prominent nose, but it's mine; I love it; 

Eyes the brown of the pansy flower; 
Medium mouth, not the best for kisses; 

Chin as round as a billiard ball; 
Dark complected — Oh, Mister, this is 

Me, and Vm better than six feet tall. 

"What est the numero of the engine ?" 

"Four hundred and fifty-six thousand three hun- 
dred and four," I replied sans batting an eyelash. 

He took it clown and disappeared into an adjoin- 
ing room. In a little while he returned with a 
license plate — second-hand to match the car. 

I carried it along to display to the man at G. H. 
Q., as it is technically known. 

"Ou can I get the tires ?" I asked. 

"Anywhere, with that order," he said. 

So I told the driver to go anywhere, and he mis- 
understood and took me everywhere. The tire 
maison he chose was. as far away as he could drive 
without crossing the Swiss border. 

"Now back to the United States garage," said I, 
and we arrived just as they were closing. 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 139 

My friend told me the car had been "taken down." 
When I saw it I was convinced that the "taking 
down" had been accomplished with shrapnel. 

"How many months will it take to put it together 
again?" I asked. 

"Tres few minutes," said the mechanic. "It will 
be all finished to-morrow midi." 

"It looks all finished now." 

"Avez-vous votre license?" he inquired. 

I displayed it triumphantly. 

"Ah, oui," he said. "But that's just the license 
for the car. Vous must aussi have a driver's 
license." 

"Bonne nuit!" I yelped. "And what for?" 

"C'est la loi," said he. "Everybody who drives 
in France must have one." 

"How do you get it?" 

"You'll have to go to the Chef de Traffic Police 
and pass the examination." 

"How long does it take?" 

"Tres brief. Not more than une heure." 

"Well, will you guarantee to have the car all 
ready when I come for it at noon to-morrow?" 



140 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

"Je promise," he said, and I drove back to the 
hotel. 

Oh, Major, wait till you see that taxi bill! 

Friday, September H» Paris, 

The traffic chief said that before he could ex- 
amine me for a license I must show him my registra- 
tion card from a regular police commissioner. I had 
been told I ought to have one of those darn things, 
but had passed it up. Now I was face to face with 
the necessity of acquiring the card and doing it 
quick. The nearest station was only a few blocks 
away. I found it jam-packed with people who 
looked as if they all worked in East St. Louis. I 
flagged an attendant. 

"I want to register," I told him. 

"You'll be called when it's your turn," he said, 
and gave me a number. It was 89,041. 

"How long will I have to wait?" 

He pondered. 

"I think they're now in the twenty-thousands," 
he said. 

Suddenly I bethought me of a document in mj 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 141 

pocket, a letter from the boss of the Maison de la 
Presse. I flashed it on him. 

"Ah-h-h!" he sighed, and led me through the 
mob to the inner shrine. 

In ten minutes I had my card. The commissioner 
didn't even want a picture, or nothin'. I plunged 
through the gang again and was stared at envi- 
ously. Some of the poor blokes have undoubtedly 
been waiting there since the Kaiser was forced into 
the war. 

Again I appeared before the traffic chief. "Of 
course," he said, "I will have to examine }^our 
papers. And avez-vous une photophie?" 

I came through. 

"Now," I said, "we're fifty-fifty. You have one 
and I have one." 

But he wasn't listening. He was rummaging for 
the deadly dossier. 

"This," he said, when he had found one, "will 
have to be filled out." 

"Yes," I replied, "I think I recall filling one out 
last time I was in France." 

"This car belongs to an American army officer?" 



142 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

"Ah, oui." 

"What does he intend to do with the car?" 

The temptation was strong to say he intended 
using it to tour the trenches. But it was no time to 
trifle. 

"He expects to ride round the camp in it, sir. 
He is in one of the high commands and has to do a 
lot of inspecting." 

"Do you know the traffic laws of Paris ?" 

"Ah, oui." 

He didn't ask me what they were. But I could 
have told him. Any part of the street you like, 
with a minimum speed limit of forty miles on the 
straightaway and sixty-five miles round the corners. 

"You are going to take the car right out of 
Paris?" 

"Ah, oui." 

"That's all," he said, and handed me a driver's 
license, horizon blue with saffron stripes. 

I thanked him and bowed myself out of the 
place. 

"From now on," I thought, "it's clear sailing." 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 143 

The car was ready. I had in my mind's eye a 
near-by unfrequented street, where I was going to 
master the driving of it in ten minutes. Then I was 
going to shoot her up to the hotel, get my baggage 
and leave town. 

"How about gas and oil?" I inquired. 

"Oil, oui, but essence, no," said the mechanic. 

"Well, throw in ten gallons," said I. 

"Ah, but has monsieur an essence ticket?" 

Monsieur never heard of it. 

"Ah, then, monsieur can get no essence." 

"Well for — " and monsieur used harsh words. 

"Monsieur can easily obtain a ticket," said the 
guy when things had quieted down. "Monsieur's 
military passes will be suffisant." 

"Where at?" 

"At the Maison du Controle de l'Essence." 

"And that is—?" 

"Vingt sept, Rue Yaki Hula Hickey Dula." 

"Is that as far away as it sounds ?" 

"Monsieur can go there and be back in une 
heure." 



144 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

Monsieur crawled wearily into a taxi and started 
for Honolulu. The military passes did prove suffi- 
sant, and there was no trouble getting a fifty-gal- 
lon book at two francs per gal. 

"I'll save time now," I thought. "I'll pick up 
my baggage on the way back to the garage." 

So I told my driver to stop at the hotel. A tele- 
gram was waiting there for me. 

"Hold car in Paris," it said. "Camp may be 
moved any day." 

This blow fell at fourteen o'clock this afternoon. 
By half-past fifteen I had called up every steamship 
office and learned that the next boat for America 
would leave from England next Wednesday night. 
I am going to be aboard. 

And now I have for sale, at auction : 

One pass through the French war zone. 
One pass good in the American camp. 
One driver's license. 
One book of essence tickets. 
One road map. 
One registration card. 
I think I will leave the four tires and the offset 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 145 

clef a vis and the wheel puller with the car. Also 
the car's license. The major is perfectly trust- 
worthy. I only hope he doesn't get killed before my 
expense account reaches him, 



VII 

I START HOME, WITH A STOP-OVER 
AT LONDON 

Saturday, September 15, Paris. 

The gentleman at the American Embassy, which 
I visited late yesterday afternoon, spake truth 
when he said it was some job to get away from 
this place. 

"If you want to leave on Sunday," quoth he, 
"you'll have to rise early Saturday and keep going 
all day. See our consul first thing in the morning, 
and he'll tell you all you have to do." 

So I saw our consul first thing this morning. 
In fact, I beat him to his office. When he came in 
he was cordial and unsuspicious, rare qualities in a 
consul. He stamped my passport "Bon pour se 
rendre en Amerique par Grande Bretagne" and a 
great deal more. 

"Now," he said, "you'll have to be viseed by the 
146 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 147 

prefet de police and approved by the British Mili- 
tary Control. I don't know in what order. They 
change it every two or three days to keep you guess- 
ing." 

I chose the British Control first and, of course, 
was wrong. But it took an hour to find this out. 

There was a big crowd of us, and we were all 
given numbers, as in a barber shop of a Saturday 
night. But the resemblance to the barber shop 
ceased with the giving, for they called us regardless 
of number. A guinea sitting next to me was 42 and 
I was 18. He preceded me into the sanctum. And 
I got there ahead of No. 12, a British matron. 

My session was brief. 

"The police vise must come first," said the officer 
in charge. 

Monsieur le Prefet has his office conveniently 
located about eight miles away from the Control, 
over the river. And he's on the fourth floor of a 
building constructed before the invention of the 
elevator. From behind an untrimmed hedge of 
black whiskers he questioned me as to my forebears, 
musical tastes and baseball preferences. Then he 



148 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

retired into chambers and presently issued forth 
with my passport, on which his stamp had been 
added to the beautiful collection already there. It 
says I'm Bon for a trip to Amerique par Angle- 
terre, so I don't know whether I'm to go that way 
or through Grande Bretagne. 

Thence back to Rue Napoleon Lajoie, and an- 
other long wait. 

"Yes," said the officer when my turn came again, 
"the vise is all right, but where is your steamship 
ticket? You'll have to show that before we can 
pass you." 

In order to show it I had to go and buy it, and in 
order to buy it I had to scare up some money, which 
is no mere child's play in Gay Paree these days. I 
called on four people before I found one who was 
touchable. With what he grudgingly forked over 
I hastened to the booking office and felt at home 
there, it being on Rue Scribe. There was a cus- 
tomer ahead of me — our president's youngest son- 
in-law. 

"Do you know who that was?" said the agent 
excitedly when the young man had departed. 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 149 

"Yes," I replied, "but we don't speak to each 
other." 

"Now," said the agent, "Fm afraid I'll have to 
ask you a few questions. It's annoying, I know, 
but it's the war-time rule." 

"Shoot," I told him. "I'm thoroughly used to 
being annoyed." 

He ran through the familiar list and saved a new 
one for the wind-up. 

"Why are you going to America?" 

I could have spent an entire week replying to 
that, but even minutes were precious. 

"Because it's where I live," proved satisfactory. 

He apologized again for having to propound the 
queries, which shows he must be new on the job. 
The rest of them don't care whether you like it or 
not. I signed six or seven pledges, gave over the 
bulk of my borrowed fortune, and set out again 
with my ticket for the Rue Jacques Johnson. I got 
there just in time, for they close early on Saturday. 
Other days the poor devils have to work right 
through from ten to four. 

The officer also wanted to know why I was going 



150 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

to America. And he asked me at what hotel I 
would stop in London. I told him Fd never been 
there and knew nothing about the hotels. 

"You must make a choice," he said. "We have to 
know your address." 

"Is there one called the Savoy?" 

"Yes." 

"Well, let's say the Savoy." 

"All right. You're to stay there, then, while 
you're in London, and you're to leave England on 
this ship Wednesday night. Otherwise you may 
have trouble." 

I'll be surprised if I don't anyhow. 

He decorated my passport with a heliotrope in- 
scription, naming the port from which I'm to de- 
part from France, the hotel in London, and my 
good ship, and sent me into the next room, where a 
vice-consul confirmed the military vise and relieved 
me of two francs. 

The train leaves at seven to-morrow morning, and 
between now and then I have only to pack and to 
settle with the hotel. The former chore will be easy, 
for I possess just half as much personal property 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 151 

as when I came. Parisian laundries have comman- 
deered the rest. 

Monday, September 17. London. 

With tear-dimmed eyes, I said farewell to Paris 
yesterday morning at the unearthly hour of seven. 
There was not even a gendarme on hand to see me 
off. 

The trip from Paris to England is arranged with 
the customary French passion for convenience. 
They get you out of bed at five to catch the train, 
which arrives in the port at noon. The Channel 
boat leaves port at ten o'clock at night, giving you 
ten solid hours in which to think. Not ten either, 
for the last two are consumed in waiting for your 
turn to be examined by the customs and viseed by 
the Authorities du Exit. 

Customs examination in this case is a pure waste 
of time. The gentleman only w T ants to know 
whether you are trying to smuggle any gold money 
out of France. I'd like to see the departing guest 
who has any kind of money left to smuggle. 

The Authorities du Exit are seven in number. 



152 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

They sit round a table, and you pass from one to 
the other until something has been done to you by 
each. One feels your pulse, another looks at your 
tongue, a third reads your passport right side up, 
a fourth reads it upside down, a fifth compares you 
with your photograph, a sixth inspects your vises 
for physical defects, and the seventh tries to throw 
a scare into you. 

I got by the first six easily. No. 7 read both 
sides of the passport and then asked by whom I was 
employed. I told him. 

"Where are your credentials?" he demanded. 

"What do you mean, credentials?" 

"You must have a letter from the magazine, show- 
ing that it employs you." 

"You're mistaken. I have no such letter." 

He looked very cross. Rut there were others left 
to scare, so he couldn't waste much time on me. 

"I'll pass you," he said, "but if you come back 
to France again, you can't leave." 

He and I should both worry. 

Rut it does seem pathetic that the written and 
stamped approval, in all colors of the rainbow, of 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 153 

the Paris chief of police, the American consul, the 
British Military Control, the British consul, the 
French consul in New York, and nearly everybody 
else in the world, including our own Secretary of 
State, sufficeth not to convince a minor-league offi- 
cial that an innocent native of Niles, Michigan, isn't 
related by marriage to the Hohenzollerns. 

On the dark deck of our Channel boat I had a 
'strawnary experience. A British colonel to whom 
I had not been introduced spoke to me. He wanted 
a light from my cigarette. And when I had given 
it to him he didn't move away, but stayed right 
there and kept on talking. 

"This is my first leave," he said (but in his own 
tongue), "since last March. Last year we were let 
off ten days every three months. Now we get 
twenty days a year." 

"In 1918," said I, for something to say, "you'll 
probably have no vacation at all." 

"In 1918," he replied confidently, "I believe we'll 
get three hundred and sixty-five days." 

We settled the war in about half an hour. Then 
he asked me to join him in a Scotch and soda. 



154 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

I was too gentlemanly to refuse. The bar, we ascer- 
tained, was closed. But we might find something 
in the dining-room. We did, but to make it legal 
we had to order biscuits, alias crackers, with the 
beverage. We didn't have to eat them, though. 
They looked to be in their dotage, like the perma- 
nent sandwiches which serve a similar purpose in 
certain blue-law cities of Les Etats Unis. 

We settled the war all over again, and retired, the 
colonel politely expressing the hope that we would 
meet for breakfast. 

The hope was not realized. I was through and 
out on deck by the time we docked at the British 
port, which was about six o'clock this morning. 

No one was permitted to leave the ship till the 
customs officials and alien officers reported for duty, 
two hours later. Then we were unloaded and herded 
into a waiting-room, where an usher seated us. An- 
other usher picked us out, four at a time, for ex- 
amination, using a system of arbitrary selective 
draft. Mine was a mixed quartet, three gents and 
a female. 

An officer looked at our passports and recorded 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 155 

details of them in a large book. Another officer ran 
the gamut of queries. And here I got into a little 
mess by telling the truth. When he asked me what 
countries I had visited, I told him France and 
added "Oh, yes, and for one day Belgium." He 
marked this fact on a slip of paper and sent me to 
the next room. The slip of paper was there ahead 
of me and I was once more a suspect. 

The young lady of our quartet, a French girl, 
was getting hers, and there was nothing for me to 
do but listen. She had a letter from her mother to 
a friend in England. The mother, it seems, had ex- 
pected to come along, but had decided to wait three 
weeks, "till the submarine warfare is over." The 
officers were very curious to know where the mother 
had picked up that interesting dope. The young 
lady couldn't tell them. Well, she would not be 
permitted to leave town till an investigation had 
been made. She was led back into the waiting- 
room and may be there yet for all I can say. 

It was my turn. 

"Are you an American?" 

"Yes, sir." 



156 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

"How long ago were you in Belgium?" 

"About ten days ago." 

"You told our officer outside that you had been 
in Paris five weeks." 

"I told him Paris had been my headquarters and 
I'd made frequent trips in and out." 

"How did you get to Belgium?" 

"In an automobile." 

"An automobile!" 

"Yes, sir." 

"What were you doing?" 

"I was being the guest of your army." 

A great light dawned upon them. 

"Oh !" said one, smiling. "He means he was be- 
hind our lines, not theirs." 

"I should hope so," said I. 

"We're sorry to have misunderstood, sir," said 
the other, and I was escorted into the baggage- 
room. There my sordid belongings were perfunc- 
torily examined, the official not even troubling to 
open my typewriter case nor a large ungainly pack- 
age containing a toy for certain parties back home. 

It was eleven o'clock when the examinations were 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 157 

all over and we entrained for this town. I got off 
at Waterloo and asked a taxi to take me to the 
Savoy. It did and it drove on the left side of all 
the streets en route. I'm still quaking. 

Tuesday, September 18. London. 

This morning I had my first experience with an 
English telephone. I asked the hotel's operator to 
get me the office of Mr. O'Flaherty, the American 
correspondent I had met at the British front* In a 
few moments she rang back. 

"Are you there?" she said, that being London for 
"Hello." 

"Here's your number, then. Carry on," she said. 

But carrying on was not so easy. There is a 
steel spring on the combination transmitter-receiver 
which you must hold down while you talk. I kept 
forgetting it. Also I kept being electrically 
shocked. But in the course of half an hour, with 
the operator's assistance, I managed to convey to 
the gentleman an invitation to call. 

He came, and we started for the Bow Street police 
station, where every visitor has to register within 



158 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

twenty-four hours of his arrival. On the way we 
met Lew Payne, the actor, and Gene Corri, racing 
man and box-fight referee. Gene has friends among 
the bobbies, and I was put through in record time. 
They told me I'd have to go to the American consul 
for a vise and then come back for a second regis- 
tration with the police. Mr. O'Flaherty opined that 
these jobs should be attended to at once, as my boat 
train was supposed to leave at nine to-morrow morn- 
ing. Mr. Payne had a better idea. 

"Let's telephone the steamship office," he said, 
"and find out whether your ship is really going to 
sail on schedule. They usually don't these days." 

Mr. O'Flaherty did the telephoning, and, sure 
enough, the blamed thing's been postponed till Sat- 
urday night. 

They asked me what I wanted to do next, and I 
said I'd like to pay my respects to George and 
Mary. But I hadn't let them know I was coming 
and they're both out of town. 

We went to Murray's (pronounced Mowrey's) 
Club for lunch, though no one in the party was a 
member and you have to sign checks to get any- 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 159 

thing. Unlike most clubs, however, you pay cash 
simultaneously with signing the check, so we weren't 
cheating. I signed "Charles Chaplin" to one check 
and it went unchallenged. 

Gene's two sons are in the British army, and the 
conversation was confined to them. I was told they 
were the best two sons a man ever had, but I knew 
better. 

Murray's Club's orchestra is jazz and it gave 
Mr. O'Flaherty and me an acute attack of home- 
sickness. 

From there we rode to the National Sporting 
Club, of which Mr. Corri is king. He asked me to 
put on the gloves with him, but I'm not one of the 
kind that picks on people five or six times my age. 

On Mr. Payne's advice, Mr. O'Flaherty and I 
purchased seats for a show called Seven Day's 
Leave, and that's where we've been to-night, we and 
another scribe, Mr. Miller of Dowagiac, Michigan, 
which, as every one knows, is a suburb of Niles. 

The show is a melodrama with so many plots that 
the author forgot to unravel two or three hundred 
of them. Of the fifteen characters, one is the hero 



160 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

and the rest are German spies, male and female. 
The hero is a British officer. Everybody wanted 
to kill him, and so far as I could see there was noth- 
ing to prevent. But he was still alive when the 
final curtain fell. The actors made all their speeches 
directly to the audience, and many of them (the 
speeches) were in the soliloquy form ruled off the 
American stage several years ago. 

In the last act the hero pretends to be blotto 
(British for spiflicated), so that, while he is ap- 
parently dead to the world, he can eavesdrop on a 
dialogue between two of the boche plotters and ob- 
tain information invaluable to England. The 
boches were completely deceived, which is more than 
can be said of the audience. 

Wednesday, September 19, London. 

Took a walk past Westminster Abbey and Buck- 
ingham Palace and found they looked just like their 
post-card pictures. 

It's almost as bad crossing streets here as in 
Paris. The taxis don't go as fast, but their habit 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 161 

of sticking to the left side keeps an American on 
what are known as tenterhooks. 

Mr. O'Flaherty loomed up at noon and guided 
me to the office of a friend with money. This rara 
avis honored a check on an American bank, and now 
I think there's enough cash on hand to see me 
through. The only trouble is that my education in 
English money has been neglected and I don't know 
when I'm being short-changed. Constantly, I pre- 
sume. 

Living conditions here have it on those in Paris. 
There are no meatless days, and a hot bath is always 
available. The town is dark at night, but it's said 
to be not for the purpose of saving fuel, but as a 
measure of protection against air raids. 

One of those things was staged last week and a 
bomb fell uncomfortably close to ye hotel. The 
dent it made in Mother Earth is clearly visible to 
the naked eye. I trust the bombers take every other 
week off. At dinner we met two American naval 
officers — a captain from Baltimore and a lieutenant 
from Rockford, which is in Illinois. What they 
told us was the most interesting stuff I've heard 



162 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

yet. But, like all interesting stuff, it's forbidden 
to write it. 

Thursday, September W. London. 

The American naval officers took me to luncheon. 
After luncheon I went to the American consul's 
where I was viseed. Thence to the Bow Street sta- 
tion for final registration. 

This evening to The Boy, a musical play which 
could use some of the plot so prodigally expended in 
Seven Days' Leave. But the music isn't bad. 

Friday, September %1. London. 

The naval officers and three of us holdup men had 
a bitter argument over the respective merits of 
Baltimore, Dowagiac, Rockford, Niles, and What 
Cheer, Iowa, of which Mr. O'Flaherty is a native, 
and, so far as I know, the only one. It was finally 
voted to award What Cheer first prize for beauty 
of name, Dowagiac for handsome young men, Niles 
for scenic grandeur, Rockford for social gaieties, 
and Baltimore for tunnels. 

I wanted to do some work, but the rest of the 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 163 

crowd seemed to think my room was open house for 
the balance of the day, and here they stuck despite 
all efforts to oust them. 

To-night it was Chu Chin Chow at His Majesty's 
Theater. You have to keep going to theaters in 
London. They're the only places that are lit up. 

Chu Chin Chow is a musical comedy based on 
The Forty Thieves, and the music, according to our 
unanimous opinion, is the best since The Merry 
Widow. I seem to have resigned as war correspond- 
ent to accept a position as dramatic critic. But, as 
Mr. O'Flaherty says, there's nothing to write about 
the war, and what you do write the censors massacre. 

Our ship still thinks it's going to sail to-morrow 
night, and the train leaves at nine-thirty in the 
morning. I am to be convoyed to port by the cap- 
tain and the lieutenant, whose holiday is over. 

Saturday, September %2. In Bond, 

We're anchored in the middle of the river and 
have no apparent intention of moving to-night. 
And everybody's out of cigarettes, and it's illegal 
to sell them while we're in bond, whatever that may 



164 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

mean. But I guess I'd rather be in it than in a 
spy's cell, which seemed to be my destination at one 
time to-day. 

The United States naval gentlemen were down 
at the train early and commandeered the best com- 
partment on it. They had saved a seat for me and 
an extra one on general principles. This was 
awarded to Mr. Hanson, one of the active members 
of the French Line conspiracy which caused my 
arrest in Bordeaux. I hope he's seasick all the way 
home. 

On the trip up from London we scored a decisive 
verbal victory over the submarines and formulated 
the terms of peace. Captain Baltimore and Lieu- 
tenant Rockford said farewell at the Liverpool dock 
and started for wherever they were going. We 
found seats in the inspection room and waited. Mr. 
Hanson grew impatient at length. He flashed his 
passport, a diplomatic one, on the usher and was 
sent through in a hurry. Not so with this well- 
known suspect. I was among the last to be called. 
My passport, strangely enough, was approved, but 
the baggage examination was yet to come. 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 165 

I found my four pieces — two containers of clothes 
and such, a typewriter, and the ungainly toy — and 
had them hoisted on to the inspection counter. The 
most curious man I ever knew went at them. 

The typewriter came first. 

"What is this ?" he asked when he had opened the 
case. 

"A typewriter." 

"Where did you buy it?" 

"In Chicago." 

"What do you use it for?" 

"For typewriting." 

"Typewriting what?" 

"Stuff for newspapers and magazines." 

"Pretty handy, isn't it?" 

"Very." 

"Have you written any articles over here?" 

"Yes." 

"Where are they?" 

"Some are in America by this time; others are 
in the censors' hands." 

He wanted to know what publications I was con- 
nected with, and I told him. He allowed me to 



166 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

close up the typewriter case, and next launched an 
offensive against a young trunk. He examined my 
collars one by one and found them all the same size. 
He came upon a package containing five or six hun- 
dred sheets of blank copy paper. He inspected 
every sheet, holding many of them up to the light. 
He gave individual attention to each of the few bits 
of lingerie the Parisians had not considered worth 
keeping. He exhibited an amazing interest in my 
other suit. He fondled a beautiful gray sweater 
for fully five minutes. He went through a copy of 
the Chu Chin Chow score, page by page. I won- 
dered he didn't sing it. Holding out only the blank 
paper, he repacked, and tackled the suit-case. 

He counted the bristles in the tooth-brush. He 
found two French dictionaries and a French gram- 
mar and studied them for approximately one semes- 
ter. He opened a nest of shirts and handkerchiefs 
and spread them out for a thorough review. I 
should hate to be a clerk in a gents' furnishing 
store and have him wished on me as a customer. 

In the lower southeast corner he discovered an 
unopened box of shaving cream. As every one 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 167 

knows, this commodity comes in a tube, which is 
wrapped in transparent paper, and the tube, thus 
wrapped, is contained in a pasteboard box for pro- 
tection or something. Old Curiosity opened the 
box and extracted the tube. He gazed at it through 
the wrapper, then removed the wrapper and stared 
at the nude tube. 

"Where is this made?" he asked. 

"In America. It comes out like a ribbon and lies 
flat on the brush." 

Without comment, he reclothed the tube as well 
as he could in its mutilated wrapper, put it back in 
its box, and repacked the suit-case and shut it. 

"Is that all you have?" he inquired. 

"No," I said. "There's that big square package 
containing a toy." 

Now about this toy. It's a complete but ridicu- 
lously impractical system of trenches. French sol- 
diers of leaden composition are resisting a boche 
attack. Some are supposed to be throwing bombs. 
Others are fighting with bayonets. A few are busy 
with the trench guns. There are threads to repre- 
sent barbed-wire entanglements and a few Huns en- 



168 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

meshed in them. Other Huns are prone, the victims 
of the sturdy poilu defense. 

The package had been opened for private ex- 
hibition purposes in London, and as I am an awful 
washout (British slang) at doing up bundles, I had 
left the job to a chambermaid, who had discarded 
the Parisian wrapping paper and used some on 
which no firm name appeared. 

Well, Mr. Question Mark now laboriously untied 
the cord, took off the paper and the cover of the 
box, and exposed the toy to the public and official 
view. Instantly two British officers, whom we shall 
call General Bone and Major Thick, flitted up to 
the counter and peered at the damning evidence. 

"What is this gentleman's name?" asked the gen- 
eral. 

He was told. 

"When did you make this thing?" he demanded. 

"I didn't," said I. "It was bought in a shop in 
Paris." 

"What shop?" 

"You can't expect a person to remember the name 
of a Parisian shop." 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 169 

"Where is the firm's name on the paper?" 

I explained that the original wrapper had been 
left in London. 

"What is your business?" demanded the major. 

"He's a correspondent," replied the inspector. 

There ensued the old familiar cross-examination 
and the request for credentials I didn't have. The 
major asked the inspector whether I was carrying 
any papers. 

"These," said the latter, and showed him the pile 
of blank copy sheets. 

The major dived for it. 

"It's all blank paper," said the inspector, and 
the major registered keen disappointment. 

Next to my suit-case lay a bag belonging to a 
gentleman named Trotter, and on it was a Japanese 
hotel label. The general glimpsed it and turned 
on me. "When were you in Japan?" he asked. 

I told him never. 

"That piece isn't his," said the inspector. "It 
belongs to a Mr. Trotter." 

"His first name is Globe," said I, but it was a 
wild pitch. 



170 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

The major and the general had a whispered 
consultation. Then the former said: "Well, I 
guess he's all right. Let him go." 

Some devil within me suggested that I say 
good-by to them in German, which I learned in our 
high school. I cast him out, and here I am, aboard 
ship, sitting still in the middle of the river. But 
I don't like being indefinitely bottled in bond and I 
appeal to you, Mr. Captain — 

Take me somewhere west of Ireland where they 

know Fm not a spy, 
Where nobody gazes at me with a cold, suspicious 

eye — 
To the good old U. S. r A., 
Where a gent can go his way 
With no fear of being picked on forty thousand 

times a day. 



VIII 

BACK IN OLD "O SAY"; I START AN- 
SWERING QUESTIONS 

Sunday, September %3. At Sea, 

A card on the wall of my stateroom says : "Name 
of Steward — Ring Once. Name of Stewardess — 
Ring Twice." If they'll give us deck space, we can 
put on a three Ring circus. 

The ship was still in bond when we awoke this 
morning, and the cheerful rumor floated round that 
she sometimes remained in harbor a week before 
securing the Admiralty's permission to sail. But 
life-boat drill was ordered right after breakfast, 
and Ring Once told me this indicated a speedy de- 
parture. My boat is No. 9. It's a male boat except 
for one Japanese lady, Mrs. Kajiro Come-here-o, 
whose husband is also of our select crew. 

Our drillmaster advised us to wear plenty of 

171 



172 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

heavy clothes till we were out of the danger zone, 
advice which it is impossible for me to follow. He 
said five blasts of the whistle would mean we were 
attacked. I think, however, that if I hear as many 
as three I'll start sauntering toward No. 9. 

At noon we felt the throb of the engines, and 
forty minutes later we were out of bond and able to 
buy cigarettes. 

Before luncheon we were assigned to our perma- 
nent seats. Naturally, I am at the captain's table, 
with a member of the House of Commons, a mem- 
ber of the House of Lords, a plain English gentle- 
man, a retiring attache of our embassy in London, 
his journalistic wife, and M. de M. Hanson of 
Washington and Peoria, his first name being Mai 
de Mer. 

The talk to-day has been of nothing but sub- 
marines. The superstitious call attention to the fact 
that with us is a lady who was on the Lusitanm 
when they torpedoed it. To offset that, however, 
we carry the president's youngest son-in-law, and 
surely there must be a limit to boche ruthlessness. 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 173 

Monday, September %4» At Sea. 

Our ship's cargo consists principally of titles, 
rumors and celebrities. Most of the titles belong to 
members of the British Commission which is coming 
over to talk food to Mr. Hoover. But there is also 
a regular baroness, round whom the young bloods 
swarm like bees. 

The rumors deal with the course of the ship. 
Some folks say we are going up Iceland way ; others 
that we are headed straight south; a few that we 
are taking the Kansas City route, and so on. The 
sun refuses to come out and tell us the truth, but 
there's a shore line in sight on our starboard, and 
Ring Once tells me it's the east coast of Ireland. 
That ought to indicate something about our gen- 
eral direction, but I don't know what. Of the 
celebrities, most of them are American journalists 
and other spies. 

Tuesday, September 25. At Sea. 

Between eight and nine every morning the bath 
steward, one Peter James, raps on the door and 



174s MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

says : "Your bath is ready, sir," And you have to 
get up and go and take it for fear of what he'd 
think of you if you didn't. But it's pretty tough 
on a man who's just spent a month in France and 
formed new habits. 

I stayed up all night playing bridge. I wanted 
to be sleepy to-day because I needed a hair cut and 
the best way to take 'em is unconsciously. The 
scheme was effective, and I didn't hear a word the 
barber said. 

The three others in the bridge game were mem- 
bers of the British Food Commission. Britishers, I 
notice, are much slower at bridge than we are. 
They think a long while before they make a play ; 
then they make the wrong play. I do the same 
thing with only half the expenditure of thought 
and time. 

Wednesday, September 26. At Sea. 

Captain Finch appeared at breakfast this morn- 
ing. It was the first time he had honored us. His 
presence at table, I'm told, indicates that we are 
out of the danger zone. 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 175 

On board we have a doctor, a D. D., who intends 
to lecture in America on the war. He happened to 
be at our table in the lounge this afternoon. Some 
one asked him if he had visited the front. 

"Indeed, yes," he said. "I was there less than a 
month ago. The British entertained me and showed 
me everything. Why, one day they were taking me 
through the front-line trenches and I asked how far 
we were from the German front line. 'Hush, Doc- 
tor,' said one of the officers. 'The Germans can 
hear you talking now. They're only twenty yards 
away.' " 

I asked him what part of the front he'd been on. 
He told me. It was exactly the same front I'd 
seen. But when I was there — and it was also less 
than a month ago — the depth of No Man's Land 
was two hundred yards, and there weren't any non- 
combatants batting round within sixty feet of a 
boche trench. No, nor a British trench either. I 
said as much right out loud, and I'm afraid I've 
spoiled his trip. 

But honest, Doc, somebody was kidding you or 
else your last name is Cook. 



176 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 



Thursday, September 27. At Sea. 



The sea was calm, the day was fair. 
E'en Mai de Mer came up for air. 



The voyage is getting sort of tiresome to us 
Americans. For the British it's not so bad. Their 
five meals per day break the monotonj^. They 
breakfast from nine to ten, lunch from one to two, 
tea from four to five, dine from seven to eight, and 
sup from eleven on. But we can't stand that pace, 
and have to w T aste a lot of time reading. 

There is a ship library full of fairly good stuff, 
but by far the most interesting matter is to be 
found in a paper published on board every day. 
Its title is The Ocean Times and the Atlantic Daily 
News. It contains two pages of news, two pages 
of editorial causerie, one of them in French, and 
four pages of real hot stuff, such as "Softness and 
Grandeur. A Brief Appreciation of a Delightful 
Excursion in Norway"; "Chance Meetings. The 
Long Arm of Coincidence and the Charm of Sur- 
prise"; "The Introduction of Electric Tramways 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 177 

into Cape Town." These essays and articles are 
boiler plate, as we journalists say, and we find them 
an excellent sedative. 

The news is received by wireless from both sides 
of the ocean. To-day's dispatches from Washing- 
ton fairly made our hair stand on end. One of 
them said: "The decision of the milk dealers here 
that they would not pay more than thirty-two cents 
per gallon for milk after October one was met by 
a counter-proposal on the part of the Maryland 
and Virginia Milk Producers' Association last night 
with an offer to fix the price at thirty-three and one- 
half cents per gallon instead of at thirty-five cents 
as originally planned." Another informed us that 
Brigadier-General Somebody, for three years as- 
sistant to the Ma j or-General Commandant at the 
Marine Corps Headquarters, had been ordered to 
command the Marine Cantonment at Somewhere, 
Virginia. A person who fails to get a thrill out of 
that must be a cold fish. But I can't help wishing 
they'd let us know when and where the world series 
is to start. 



178 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

It is announced that Doc Cook will preach at the 
ship's service Sunday morning. His text, no doubt, 
will be "Twenty Yards from the German Trenches." 

Saturday, September 29. At Sea. 

Captain Finch says we will reach New York 
Tuesday. But if they don't quit turning the clock 
back half an hour a day we'll never get there. 

Sunday, September SO. At Sea. 

The doctor preached, but disappointed a large 
congregation with a regular sermon. 

After we had sung God Save the Kmg and 
America, I came to my stateroom to work and im- 
mediately broke the carriage cord on my typewriter. 
I said one or two of the words I had just heard in 
church; then borrowed a screw driver from Ring 
Once and proceeded to dilacerate the machine. It 
took over an hour to get it all apart and about two 
hours to decide that I couldn't begin to put it to- 
gether again. 

I went on deck and told my troubles to Mr. Hol- 
lister of Chicago. Mr. Hollister was sympathetic 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 179 

and a life-saver. He introduced me to a young 
man, named after the beer that made Fort Wayne 
famous, who is a master mechanic in the employ of 
the Duke of Detroit. The young man said he had 
had no experience with typewriters, but it was one 
of his greatest delights to tinker. I gave him leave 
to gratify his perverted taste and, believe it or 
not, in forty minutes he had the thing running, 
with a piece of common binding twine pinch-hitting 
for the cord. Then I went entirely off my head and 
bought him wine. 

Monday, October 1. Nearly There. 

It's midnight. An hour ago we went on deck and 
saw the prettiest sight in the world — an American 
lighthouse. First we felt like choking; then like 
joking. Three of us — Mr. and Mrs. P. Williams 
and I — became extremely facetious. 

"Well," said Mrs. Williams, "there's < 'Tis of 
Thee.' " 

"Yes," said her husband, "that certainly is old 
<0 Say.' " 



180 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

I've forgotten what I said, but it was just as 
good. 

The light — standing, they told me, on Fire 
Island — winked at us repeatedly, unaware, perhaps, 
that we were all married. I'll confess we didn't 
mind at all and would have winked back if we could 
have winked hard enough to carry nineteen nautical 
miles. 

Ring Once was waiting at the stateroom door to 
tell me to have all baggage packed and outside first 
thing in the morning. 

"I'll see that it's taken off the ship," he said. 
"You'll find it under your initial on the dock." 

"What do you mean, under my initial?" 

He explained and then noticed that my junk was 
unlabeled. I'd worried over this a long while. 
My French Line stickers had not stuck. [And how 
would New Yorkers and Chicagoans know I'd been 
abroad? I couldn't stop each one and tell him. 

The trusty steward disappeared and soon re- 
turned with four beautiful labels, square, with a red 
border, a white star in the middle, and a dark blue 
L, meaning me, in the middle of the star. 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 181 

"Put those on so they'll stay," I instructed him. 
"There's no sense in crossing the ocean and then 
keeping it a secret." 

Tuesday, October 8. A Regular Hotel. 

M. de M. Hanson, looking as if he'd had just 
as much sleep as I, was in his, or somebody else's 
deck chair, reading a yesterday's New York paper, 
when I emerged to greet the dawn. 

"I don't know where this came from," he said, 
"but it's got what you want to know. The series 
opens in Chicago next Saturday. They play there 
Saturday and Sunday, jump back to New York 
Monday and play here Tuesday and Wednesday." 

"And," said I, "may the better team win — in four 
games." 

We were anchored in the harbor, waiting for a 
pilot, that was, as usual, late. I was impatient but 
M. de M. didn't seem to care. He's wild about 
ocean travel so long as it's stationary. 

Presently the youngest of the food commis- 
sioners, one Mr. Bowron, joined us. He asked the 



182 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

name of every piece of land in sight. We answered 
all his questions, perhaps correctly. 

"That one," said M. de M., pointing, "is Staten 
Island. Of course you've heard of it." 

"I'm afraid not," said Mr. Bowron. 

"What!" cried Mr. Hanson. "Never heard of 
Staten Island!" 

"The home of Matty Mclntyre," I put in. "One 
of the greatest outside lefts in the history of soccer. 
He played with the Detroit and Chicago elevens in 
the American League." 

Mr. Bowron looked apologetic. 

"And in that direction," said Mr. Hanson, point- 
ing again, "is Coney Island, where fashionable 
New York spends its summers." 

"Except," said I, "the aristocratic old families 
who can't be weaned away from Palisades Park." 

Mr. Bowron interviewed us on the subject of 
hotels. 

"There are only two or three first-class ones," 
said Mr. Hanson. "The Biltmore's fair. It's got 
elevators and running hot water." 

"But no electric lights," I objected. 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 183 

"Oh, yes," said Mr. Hanson. "They put in 
electricity and set the meter the week we left." 

Breakfast was ready, and for the first time on the 
trip Mr. Hanson ate with a confidence of the future. 
For the first time he ordered food that was good for 
him. Previously it hadn't mattered. 

When we went back on deck, the world's largest 
-face clock was on our left, and on our right 
the business district of Pelham's biggest suburb. 
And immediately surrounding us were Peter James 
and Ring Once and the lounge steward and the 
deck steward and the dining-room stewards — in 
fact, all the stewards we'd seen and a great many we 
hadn't. 

"We're trapped," said Mr. Hanson. "Our only 
chance for escape is to give them all we've got. 
Be ready with your one-pounders and your silver 
pieces." 

At the end of this unequal conflict — the Battle 
of the Baltic — Rear- Admiral Lardner's fleet was all 
shot to pieces, most of them the size of a dime, and 
when Mr. Brennan of Yonkers announced that his 
car would meet the ship and that he would gladly 



184 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

give me a ride to my hotel I could have kissed him 
on both cheeks. It took my customs inspector about 
a minute to decide that I was poor and honest. The 
baroness, though, when we left the dock, was en- 
gaged in argument with half a dozen officials, who 
must have been either heartless or blind. 

Mr. Brennan's chauffeur drove queerly. He in- 
sisted on sticking to the right side of the street, and 
slowed up at busy intersections, and he even paid 
heed to the traffic signals. In Paris or London he'd 
have been as much at home as a Mexican at The 
Hague. 

The hotel gave me a room without making me 
tell my age or my occupation or my parents' birth- 
place. The room has a bath, and the bath has two 
water faucets, one marked hot and one marked cold, 
and when you turn the one marked hot, out comes 
hot water. And there's no Peter James around to 
make you bathe when you don't feel the need. 

The room has a practical telephone too, and 
pretty soon I'm going to start calling up acquaint- 
ances with kind hearts and good cooks. The first 
who invites me to dinner is in tough luck. 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 185 

Friday, October 5, Chicago. 

"Miner" Brown, the great three-fingered pitcher, 
used to be asked the same questions by every one 
to whom he was introduced. As a breath-saving 
device he finally had some special cards printed. On 
one side was his name. On the other the correct 
replies : 

1. Because I used to work in a mine. 

2. It was cut off in a factory when I was a kid. 

3. At Terre Haute, Ind. 

4. Rosedale, right near Terre Haute. 

5. Not a bit. 

When he left home in the morning he was always 
supplied with fifty of these cards, and sometimes 
he got rid of the whole supply before bedtime. 

I departed from New York Wednesday night. 
Our train picked up the New York Baseball Club at 
Philadelphia. I was acquainted with about fifteen 
of the twenty (odd) athletes. Every one of the 
fifteen, from Mr. Zimmerman down, shot the same 
queries at me. Every person I've encountered here 
at home too, and usually in the same order: 



186 MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 

1. How'd you like it over there? 

£. Did you see any subs? 

3. Did you see any fighting? 

4. Could you hear the guns? 

5. How close did you get to the front? 
6o Did you see any American soldiers ? 

7. How many men have we got over there ? 

8. How are things in Paris ? 

9. Were you in England? 

10. How are things in London ? 

11. Were you in any air raids? 

12. How long is it going to last? 

Now truth may be stranger than fiction, but it's 
also a whole lot duller. Most of my answers have 
very evidently bored my audiences to the point of 
extinction. Yet I hesitate to start weaving the well- 
known tangled web. I'd be bound to trip in it 
sooner or later. Last night, in desperation, I 
drafted a card along the line of Mr. Brown's. But 
it lacked wallop, as you can see for yourself. 

1. Oh, pretty well. 

2. No. 

3. A little. 



MY FOUR WEEKS IN FRANCE 187 

4. Oh, yes. 

5. A mile and a half, on the observation hill. 

6. Oh, yes. 

7. That's supposed to be a secret. 

8. Pretty gay. 

9. Yes. 

10. All right, so far as I could see. 

11. No. 

12. I don't know. 



The End 



